In a press conference yesterday, Sony officially revealed the successor to 2004’s PSP (and its various other incarnations, like the PSP Slim, PSP Slim 3000 and PSP Go) that has sold 62 million worldwide, code named the Next Generation Portable (NGP).

Trailer for NGP

The Unveiling

The Hardware Itself

It looks absolutely nothing like the leaked images of the PSP2, and instead adheres more to the style of the original PSP.

The NGP has a beautifully glossy 5-inch OLED touchscreen, slightly larger than the original’s 4.3-inch screen.

Rumors saying the NGP will have a touchpad on the back proved true, and it has a 5 inch touchpad on the back, opening up a whole new world of possibilities in terms of controls. Where you touch on the touchpad corresponds directly to the screen on the front, and they’re both multi-touchpads.

The NGP also possess front and rear cameras, and has 3G and wifi connectivity. For those worried about short battery life, Sony is targeting to have enough charge for 3-5 hours of gaming, comparable to the PSP 3000.

The new portable console also has 2 real analog sticks, named Micro Analog Sticks, rather than the solitary sad excuse of an analogy nub in the first PSP. Furthermore, the UMD drive is now gone, replaced with flash memory storage for games.

According to Kotaku though, the NGP is ‘surprisingly light’ due to the fact that the UMD drive had been removed.

The NGP is also slightly larger than the PSP, which could be a problem as the latter was already too big to be put comfortably into jean pockets.

Sony’s still keeping the price of the NGP secret, but we’re pretty sure it won’t be cheap, considering Sony’s track record.

No release date was announced as well, but it’s scheduled to be released this holiday season in Japan.

The Meat of it

  • Playstation Suite

PlayStation Suite is a mobile platform that will allow for PS1 games to be played on Android-based phones, as well as the PSP2.

Early titles announced to be coming out for the PlayStation Suite is Wild Arms, Cool Boarders 2, Rally Cross, MediEvil and Syphon Filter.

  • LiveArea

This new service by Sony will allow you to detect when there are NGP owners around your area, letting you play games with them and chat with them.

  • SixAxis

The NGP will have a gyrosensor embedded in its innards, and it’ll work just like the SixAxis controller for the PS3.

  • Ease of Porting

The ease of porting PS3 assets to the NGP was touted as a major advantage, with Hideo Kojima of Metal Gear Solid fame demonstrating Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriot on the NGP.

He said to Kotaku, “This game used the model data and environments from PS3, and it was exported directly to NGP. On NGP, we can enjoy the same quality as the PS3.”

With the convenience for developers, we can conceivably see a lot of PS3 titles coming to the NGP. Metal Gear Solid 4 is not announced for the NGP though.

Titles Announced For NGP

Gravity Daze
Hot Shots Golf
Killzone
Hustle Kings
Reality Fighters
Smart As
Broken
Little BigPlanet
Little Deviants
Wipeout
Resistance
Uncharted
Call of Duty

Here’s a video of some of the games being played on the NGP.

https://youtu.be/K3EloCX9hy8

As you can see, the graphics are absolutely amazing, almost rivaling home consoles in quality.

Sony’s Official Specifications

CPU
ARM® Cortex-A9 core (4 core)

GPU
SGX543MP4+

External Dimensions
Approx. 182.0 x 18.6 x 83.5mm (width x height x depth) (tentative, excludes largest projection)

Screen (Touch screen)
5 inches (16:9), 960 x 544, Approx. 16 million colors, OLED
Multi touch screen (capacitive type)

Rear touch pad
Multi touch pad (capacitive type)

Cameras
Front camera, Rear camera

Sound
Built-in stereo speakers
Built-in microphone

Sensors
Six-axis motion sensing system (three-axis gyroscope, three-axis accelerometer), Three-axis electronic compass

Location
Built-in GPS
Wi-Fi location service support

Keys / Switches
PS button
Power button
Directional buttons (Up/Down/Right/Left)
Action buttons (Triangle, Circle, Cross, Square)
Shoulder buttons (Right/Left)
Right stick, Left stick
START button, SELECT button
Volume buttons (+/-)

Wireless communications
Mobile network connectivity (3G)
IEEE 802.11b/g/n (n = 1×1)(Wi-Fi) (Infrastructure mode/Ad-hoc mode)
Bluetooth® 2.1+EDR (A2DP/AVRCP/HSP)