Sony NGP Announced

So we were expecting the Playstation Portable 2 (PSP2), instead we get the Next Generation Portable or NGP – It’s still a code-name for the time being, but here it is, Sony’s next foray into the the portable gaming world. Most of the important details have been released at Sony’s Tokyo trade show, to which most will be salivating over, so here you go…

The NGP includes a 5 inch OLED 960×544 Touchscreen, ARM Cortex A9 (4 core) CPU, dual analogue – six-axis controls, multi-touch rear touch pad, WiFi, bluetooth, 3G, GPS and 2 cameras… And it plays games using yet another new ‘Flash Memory’ based card system. I guess backwards compatibility will be limited to digital downloads only… hey wait, haven’t we seen this before?

Ogle over some pretty pictures…

Pricing details remain undisclosed at present, so we can save up our pennies for the shock of a lifetime later. Games that will be released at some point include the likes of Uncharted, Wipeout, Killzone and LittleBigPlanet. The rear touch pad is definitely a strange and interesting feature. It’s mapped as a 1:1 ratio to the OLED screen, so that you can interact with the display without your fingers getting in the way – though it may increase your chance of dropping the unit, trying to perform various maneuvers.

There has been no word on the battery life either, but with the removal of the optical based UMD system and introduction of flash storage, battery times will be improved – but maybe counteracted by the now larger screen.

While technically, this looks very impressive just from the specs alone, I can’t shake this feeling we could be looking at another PSP Go… Time will tell as more details are announced.