Sony officially announced the PSP2 and gave it the codename NGP for “Next Generation Portable”.
The long rumored handheld finally received an official announcement when Sony unveiled the impressive PSP successor onstage at the recent PlayStation Meeting 2011. After tons of concept art and lists of wanted specs, the world finally got their first look at the true next generation handheld.
NGP will feature a 5″ OLED multi-touch touchscreen and the long asked for dual analog sticks. It will also feature a rear touchscreen that had been in the rumored specs before the announcement that will allow for some cool gaming possibilities. It will be packed with a rear and front facing camera and SIXAXIS motion sensor that also opens up a ton of gaming possibilities. For connectivity, NGP will include built-in Wi-Fi, 3G, Bluetooth, as well as GPS. All of which will allow Sony to explore the whole location based gaming world. The UMD is officially gone as most people predicted, but will use a new flash based memory cartridge that will hold full games as well as DLC and saved games. The graphics were really impressive and even showed off direct PlayStation 3 movies ported over.
NGP’s specs are undeniably cool, but when Sony brought on some of the developers working on games for the upcoming handheld, it really started to shine. The biggest game announcement that everybody is talking about is that Nathan Drake will be making his way onto the PSP2. Uncharted Portable (working title) will feature our favorite Indy impersonator in an all new adventure. What was really cool, besides how good it looked, was that it took advantage of all of the cool new hardware tools NGP offers. You were able to swing Drake on a rope and look around the world using the SIXAXIS motion control, climb a rope using a hand over hand motion with the rear touchscreen, and direct Drake up a path on a wall using just the multi-touch screen. I got to say it looks pretty impressive, but I could see people reverting back to the analog sticks and buttons once you’ve gotten past the newness of the controls.
No word on price as of yet, but some analysts are predicting it could hit the $300 mark and more. No release date has been given yet either but Sony is hopeful it will arrive for the 2011 holiday season.
