Sony's NeoGeo Pocket's (PSP2/Vita) business/non technical ramifications talk

[wco81]

Learning what? The fabled and non-written rule of law that the hardware in an handheld should be highly profitable garbage?

There is a market for high-end handheld. The PSP was an high-end handheld, with limited input functionality (no touchscreen) and mobility (wifi only), it was release at the beginning (if not before) of the whole mobile internet mainstream era, and it yet was a successful product for Sony.

Was it a different product than the Nintendo DS? Yes, and that's good! The last thing I'd want is to see another PS360 situation where two machines are stupidly redundant of one another.

I'll get a NGP for my high-end portable gaming, media consumption and internet browsing (in conjunction with my smartphones, netbooks and tablets. It's not one or another when it could be any) and a 3DS for the 3DS exclusives.

But I seriously won't let the idea of thinking that Sony might not have as much market share as Nintendo in the handheld space affect my purchase decisions.

Save for the potentially stupidly low battery life of the thing, I'm positively surprised by the quality of the product. It's like it addressed all my personal issues with handheld gaming. Save for that disgusting interface, it's almost the perfect gaming handheld to me. Now, if they allowed some sort of homebrew on it, so we can get emulators running on it, it would be the perfect gaming handheld.

There wasn't a big smart phone gaming (and other entertainment apps.) market back then.

At the time, the PSP featured a screen at a price which couldn't be easily matched, not to mention the broadband engine in it.

Now, we may be seeing the growth of a tablet market. You won't get bigger OLED screens in tablets that soon. But performance-wise, it seems tablet SOCs will catch up and pass the performance of this NGP thing in a couple of years.

We don't know the price of the thing. With 3G, at least in the US, you may have to sign a data contract.

If they can get it under $350 without a contract, they could win sales from tablets. But if the price is comparable to tablets (and why wouldn't it be, given the hardware), then people will have to choose between a game-centric tablet/PMP and tablets which aren't as good for games but may be stronger for other media (HDMI output, more photo and video apps., etc.).

I'd rather play immersive, detailed games like Uncharted on a PS3 (but if I commuted on trains or flew a lot, I might think differently). Where this could be interesting is if in addition to games you can't get on smart phones/tablets, you got the general mobile apps. that are available on those other devices.

For instance, instead of buying a GPS, if they had GPS apps. for this NGP along with car cradles and such, it would make the device more attractive. It doesn't have to have as many apps. as iOS or Android but cover all the categories, like being able to your banking, things like Evernote and a modern browser.

 

[patsu]

But anyway I really think the 3G costs of this device is what will sink or swim it.

Verizon may want $30 a month for playing online and the same with AT&T . I'm not sure how well it wlill work out.

3G is optional on NGP.

More details…
http://www.andriasang.com/e/blog/2011/01/29/hirai_ngp_details/

One of the major points from the interview is that Hirai acknowledged that there are plans for multiple versions of the hardware, including Wi-Fi only versions and 3G + Wi-Fi versions. Such hardware developments will be made on a region-by-region basis, he said.

As announced at PlayStation meeting, the NGP is compatible with PSP software. PSP titles will run completely through emulation, said Hirai.

Internally, NGP uses an original games-oriented operating system, revealed Hirai. It's not Android. Different from the PSP, the OS has a modern framework akin to a PC.

Package PSP games will ship on a custom memory card format. This is basically a ROM, but it has rewritable space which can be used for save data and download data. Hirai said to think of it as similar to the memory cards used by the Nintendo DS.

NGP will also support general memory cards, a Sony representative told Impress. Specific formats were not mentioned. The site did not make clear what "support" means.

Separate from the Hirai interview, the Impress Watch story says that the NGP in its current form will not support video output. The site was told this by a Sony representative.

There are more tidbits in the article.

 

[eastmen]

3G is optional on NGP.

More details…
http://www.andriasang.com/e/blog/2011/01/29/hirai_ngp_details/









There are more tidbits in the article.

I know its optional , but you can't truely be portable without wifi every where at that point .

The real question is the cost of 3g on these devices.


There is to much right now for me to even know what i'm going to do. I preordered it today, i figure worse comes to worse i can prob flip it for $100-$150 on launch day if i decide against it.


See my major concern is that this will end up like the psp for me. Which wasn't a bad system but it had so many games i simply didn't care about.

If MS shows off a handheld this year I will most likely just skip the NGP even if the NGP has the better specs. Unless the NGP inches closer to my game likes than the psp ever did

 

[patsu]

I know its optional , but you can't truely be portable without wifi every where at that point .

The real question is the cost of 3g on these devices.

Portable simply means you can carry it around. Many iPad and iPod Touch users rely on WiFi. For everywhere connectivity, it should be cheaper to tether to your cell.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

On PSP backward compatibility:

Colour me surprised!

Couldn't it output video to a TV through wireless?

There are various workarounds we can dream up, but the product was announced without offering TV out, meaning Sony are not saying, "and yes, this little device will serve as your portable media player with GBs of content you can play directly out to your TV at 720p". In fact, what have they said about viewing content anyway? We haven't heard of any on-board flash.

If the PSPs audience does migrate away from the platform, the only alternative that makes sense to me is the 3DS. Although I think what drew people to the PSP in the first place, basically the quality and fidelity to the home console experience...

50 million PSPs have been sold. I don't believe most of them were drawn to PSP for its quality and fidelity to the home console experience. I think a lot picked it for its media capabilities - it had a strikingly good screen for its time of release, and was price competitively with things like Archos while also offering other entertainment functions including games. PSP is no longer the only full media platform; they can all do everything. Meaning now the reasons to own a PSP, for gaming, films, music, web browsing, all in one package, are no longer reasons to get NGP when your mobile already does that, including GPS, internet access, yada yada. The only differentiator now is the game potential, which won't appeal to everyone. So how many of the 50 million PSP buyers care for twin-stick shooters and Monster Hunter? If 10 million, that leaves 40 million without a particular tie to NGP. Thus we can't look at NGP even repeating PSP's respectible success, unless tens of millions of console gamers also want to play those same games on the go Which we can be confident isn't the case given existing console gamers saying, "I want to play those experiences on my console."

In a way it's like PSS is there to shore up the probably titchy market, with developers being told they don't have to target a small user base but will have a huge one, with Sony able to invest in PSS exclusives to single-handedly try and attract buyers with titles like Uncharted and LBP.

 

[eastmen]

Portable simply means you can carry it around. Many iPad and iPod Touch users rely on WiFi. For everywhere connectivity, it should be cheaper to tether to your cell.

Yes but whats the point of COD BO if your playing solo while others are playing 3G multiplayer is my point

Alot of cells don't allow you to tether or charge you for it. Verizon is moving away from unlimited plans and att no longer have them

 

[jeff_rigby]

You mean like RemotePlay between NGP and PS3 ? It will fall back to 802.11g. May be laggy for some games. Personally, I'm not sure if PS3 has spare resources to handle RemotePlay for games like GT5. The network overhead/latency takes up one chunk of time, leaving only a small portion left for PS3 to complete all its tasks. Only Sony knows the details and stats.

Video is a different story because there is no real-time interaction.

Using worst case you are correct it would fall back to 802.11g. For those of us who have purchased a new $39.00 802.11N router this is not the case. "N" from NGP to router and 100-1000 gigabit to the PS3.

"N" is the standard now and cheap. This creates a different playing field and I expect wireless HDMI might require "N". Next hardware change to the PS3 I expect to have "N" or dual channel "N" just as Sony CE platforms now have "N".

Also, the hardware choices for the PSP2 or NGP are similar to the coming Android 2.3 tablets, I think, on purpose. IF you are going to port NGP games to Android it makes sense to have hardware and OS features similar to the target port. I expect this means that Sony will be providing OS features similar to Android 2.3 like for instance Gesture and voice recognition.

No official phone support in NGP is probably because battery life makes it impractical to leave it continuously on. I expect an app to support phone calling (Skype could be used) be it Sony or third party.

 

[liolio]

Here's my issue with a device like this. If I'm at home and feel like gaming, then I'll play on a pc or console and get a proper gaming experience. If I'm heading out then I do not want to have to carry anything more than my phone so I'd never bring it with me. If I absolutely positively felt the need to carry something with me when heading out, other than my phone which is always with me, then I'd bring a laptop or tablet and have the ability to game and do everything else I want as a bonus without being confined to whatever this device will limit me to. So I just don't see how this device can ever sell in large numbers, seems like it will be relegated to niche except perhaps in Japan.

I share your opinion, I'm still a little bitter in regard to the playstation phone and how it is not more of a join venture project between Sony and Sony-Erickson (I know that they are seperate companies). Sony and Sony-Erickson had imho a go to secure a lot of the mobility gaming market for themselves.

On the other side I can't wait to see what the system offers as even I'm home a mobile device (properly designed, potent enough) could easily become my main gaming rig

So I've shared sentiments in regard to the NGP as as great as it looks I feel like a properly backed Playstation would have done more for Sony business wide.

 

[Arwin]

Yes but whats the point of COD BO if your playing solo while others are playing 3G multiplayer is my point

Alot of cells don't allow you to tether or charge you for it. Verizon is moving away from unlimited plans and att no longer have them

I don't think there are many phones at the moment that have good enough 3G connections for that kind of thing, but I could be wrong. The issue being that they have buffers that can be rather 'generous' on the latency end.

The PSP2 should benefit greatly and for a long time from having games that run under an OS that is optimised for gaming and offers much better access to the hardware. While that could change, it is not likely that a phone would be able to do a similar thing necessarily. I think that ties in pretty strongly to the reason why the PSP2 doesn't also want to be a phone.

But it is not yet fully clear to me how far they can take this to either end. They do have a system in place for having well integrated interactivity and online features, to what basically amounts to a nfs type autolog for each and every game if I understand the 8-4 podcast correctly (where I heard one of very few people who actually got to play with the device for 10 minutes hands on).

At the same time, having most of the features and having a chipset that is fully in line with Android support, it could also be fairly easy for them to set it up to the point where Android apps should run on it. After all, Android apps run against a nicely closed virtualised set of calls, and I'm guessing (I could be wrong) it should be reasonably easy to open those up if Sony desires to (but they may not even be interested to do so if it is trivial enough for an Android app publisher to also publish against the Playstation Suite).

Many questions, and given past experience it's wise not to hope for too much, but things do look promising at least. I'm expecting a non-3G model to hit $299 sooner rather than later. I don't think it can afford to be more than $349 at launch. If they manage to launch end of year somewhere, then I think the components should be affordable enough to pull it off without a significant loss.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

"N" is the standard now and cheap. This creates a different playing field and I expect wireless HDMI might require "N".

to be clear, there's no such things as wireless HDMI. There are three standards none of which is Wifi n, although a couple can operate with 'backwards compatibilty' in the same spectrum. But sticking an 802.11n transmitter in NGP won't enable any standard wireless HD TV connection AFAIK, and again, Sony aren't even advertising it. So even if eventually NGP can connect wirelessly to TVs, it's not going to be a sales point for launch or generating early interest. It'll be a possible feature that we may or may not get, like cross-game VC on PS3.

Also, the hardware choices for the PSP2 or NGP are similar to the coming Android 2.3 tablets, I think, on purpose. IF you are going to port NGP games to Android it makes sense to have hardware and OS features similar to the target port. I expect this means that Sony will be providing OS features similar to Android 2.3 like for instance Gesture and voice recognition.

Umm, the hardware choices are those for a mobile device. The fact the hardware that suits a handheld is the same as suits a smartphone is the reason they share similarities. What other options did Sony have?! And OS compatibility isn't tied to hardware at all. PSS doesn't care one jot about hardware. The fact the hardware is alike is no indicator that the features of NGP will mirror a smart phone. That's like expecting to be able to word process on XB360 because its hardware is similar to a PC, or maybe a PPC Mac if you feel the absence of x86 is a problem. When you saw Xbox's specs for the first time, a PIII with an nVidia GForce GPU, did you expect it to feature Window's type functions, just because the hardware was exactly the same? NGP will feature gesture recogntion in programs that decide to use it, and Sony will no doubt provide camera libs like they do already for EyeToy and PSEye, but looking for clues in hardware similarites between different devices is looking in the wrong place.

 

[corduroygt]

How on earth is PSP2 3G any different than ipad 3G? It's not a 2 year contract with the ipad, just monthly, similar with other tablets. You also won't be playing COD MP on 3G, at least not AT&T's 3G since its pings are 300ms.

 

[jeff_rigby]

to be clear, there's no such things as wireless HDMI. There are three standards none of which is Wifi n, although a couple can operate with 'backwards compatibilty' in the same spectrum. But sticking an 802.11n transmitter in NGP won't enable any standard wireless HD TV connection AFAIK, and again, Sony aren't even advertising it. So even if eventually NGP can connect wirelessly to TVs, it's not going to be a sales point for launch or generating early interest. It'll be a possible feature that we may or may not get, like cross-game VC on PS3.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_HDMI

Phillips showed the first Wireless HDMI BLu-Ray player at CES. Multiple USB to wireless to wireless recever HDMI were shown at CES. The above Wiki describes several wireless HDMI schemes. Broadcom now has a wireless "N" dual channel combo USB chip for CE platforms. True there may NOW be no published Wireless HDMI standard but I expect that is coming with 720P being supported by "N" (which the NGP supports). There may be a limit in the ability to encrypt on the fly in the NGP chipset.

HDCP wireless HDMI is what's new.

Intel demoed WiDi last year and it's supported in Sandy bridge equipped laptops. The on-the-fly encryption requiring a fast CPU or dedicated hardware. I believe Open CL (access to vector processors) in the newer graphics chips might be able to do this. Industry Standards have not been adopted yet, there are several competing products.

The newest iteration of the WiDi technology, WiDi 2.0, utilizes the Quick Sync engine developed by SNB, as revealed by a recent report.

This engine encodes the frame buffer in real time and also sends it, 802.11n, to compatible WiFi receivers attached to a TV.

And the above is not truly wireless HDMI, nor would the NGP have true wireless HDMI to HDMI. It's really a compressed encrypted video stream that is sent wireless then unencrypted and uncompressed on the other end to finally be either converted to HDMI if external with that final step eliminated if it's internal to the receiving device which supports wireless "N".


http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2011/01/06/wireless_tv_to_be_big_story_at_vegas_show/

Umm, the hardware choices are those for a mobile device. The fact the hardware that suits a handheld is the same as suits a smartphone is the reason they share similarities. What other options did Sony have?! And OS compatibility isn't tied to hardware at all. PSS doesn't care one jot about hardware. The fact the hardware is alike is no indicator that the features of NGP will mirror a smart phone. That's like expecting to be able to word process on XB360 because its hardware is similar to a PC, or maybe a PPC Mac if you feel the absence of x86 is a problem. When you saw Xbox's specs for the first time, a PIII with an nVidia GForce GPU, did you expect it to feature Window's type functions, just because the hardware was exactly the same? NGP will feature gesture recogntion in programs that decide to use it, and Sony will no doubt provide camera libs like they do already for EyeToy and PSEye, but looking for clues in hardware similarites between different devices is looking in the wrong place.

The point was; to develop a game for PS Suite on the PSP2 with features supported by Android requires at a minimum you support those features on the PSP2. The new Android 2.3 features gesture and voice recognition. Since the hardware is similar, the PSP2 OS can support the same. Will it, yes because that can be used in game for control. Was the hardware design of the PSP2 influenced by Android 2.3 tablet designs, yes. You just see a more casual connection.

What the above means for the PSP2 is that most Android OS features will be supported by the PSP2 OS. Since the hardware is similar it can. This is what I was attempting to get across.

Most Android tablets will have 1080P HDMI out, the PSP2 will not have any hardwired TV out so there are differences in hardware choices but the differences do not affect the minimum FEATURE set to allow both platforms to share game IP.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Wireless HDMI of any sort is going to require realtime encoding of the video stream. Realtime encoding of a 480p video stream to reduce bandwidth requirements is still going to require a fairly significant amount of processing time. 480p is still going to require ~1 Gbit/s uncompressed. And Wireless-N only claims up to 300 Mbit/s. I'm sure if Sony wants to cut their battery time by half or more in order to enable it, it might be possible.

It would be far more feasible to just include an HDMI port.

Regards,
SB

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Now, we may be seeing the growth of a tablet market. You won't get bigger OLED screens in tablets that soon. But performance-wise, it seems tablet SOCs will catch up and pass the performance of this NGP thing in a couple of years.

Windows tablets will pass it up fairly quickly. There's already Core i3 Clarksfield tablets in the pipe. As well tablets based on AMD APUs and Sandy Bridge.

Battery life will obviously be lower than the NGP using a full desktop CPU. But AMD's Brazos system is already showing low end PC gaming performance (low settings at 1024x768) with less than Atom power consumption. Now those are full fledged modern PC games obviously not optimized for a portable platform. Pretty impressive for higher processing power at lower power useage.

And there's also Oaktrail, although I'm not expecting much of a performance boost over Atom as I think it's mostly about reducing power consumption.

And Razer is working on a portable Windows gaming device. Although being basically a 7" device with custom LED compact keyboard, it's not quite handheld territory. (http://www.engadget.com/2011/01/06/razer-switchblade-preview-3g-intel-oak-trail-almost-definitel/ )

And that doesn't even bring in ARM with Android or Windows 8.

There's going to be a LOT of movement and options in the portable "whatever" market over the next few years.

Anyway, I like the design of the NGP although I'm not sold on the side buttons. Holding onto a 3.5" HDD and pretending like I'm using the thumb sticks and using the side buttons seems awkward. I miss the shoulder buttons on the PSP which are far more useable. But I can see where this design makes should buttons impractical.

Not having HDMI out on the device is a bit of a shame, IMO. That totally ruins it's use as a dedicated portable media device, IMO. I have a tablet that can output 1080p over HDMI that would serve far better as a portable media device, IMO.

A shame as the screen on this looks to be pretty nice.

For on the go gaming I already know I'm going to pick up a Nintendo 3DS, do I need another device? If this had HDMI out, then it'd be under serious consideration.

But as it is, looking forward I'm rather instead considering the 3DS for on the go gaming and a far more capable and useful tablet for media + other services.

I think a lot of people might be like me. If they want a portable gaming device they don't really need 2 of them. Last gen I went with a PSP over a DS due to it's gorgeous LCD screen. This gen, I'm going with a 3DS just because glasses free 3D seems far more interesting than a high resolution LCD which is fairly common now days.

It's almost like Sony is trying to do a lot of thing with this device, but not quite doing enough. It's feels like it's caught between being a specialized device that does one thing very well (3DS) and devices that do a little bit of everything, but not quite sure what exactly it wants to do.

I dunno, I guess I'm somewhat confused as to who Sony are trying to target with this.

The core gamer is obvious. But if they really wanted the core gamer, an evolution of the PSP would be much better. Shoulder buttons being far more comfortable and useable than the side buttons this features.

It appears they want to target on the go media types, but seem to miss the boat when they don't include a way to display video on a TV something that, IMO, is only going to get more common on tablets going forward.

Hell as it is, going forward, I see closed system tablets (iPad for example) losing out to open system tablets (unlocked Android, Windows, and perhaps OSX) where users can install whatever they want. In that aspect, the NGP becomes less attractive as time goes on, IMO.

Still, that said. I do really like the design.

Regards,
SB

 

[Shifty Geezer]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_HDMI

Phillips showed the first Wireless HDMI BLu-Ray player at CES.

Seems like there's a confusion with terminology. HDMI is a specification for combined AV connectivity with HDCP. The current wireless HD display technologies aren't related to HDMI but developed independently. Clearly the mass media is using HDMI as a catch-all phrase for wireless display connectivity, but we shouldn't be talking about support for wireless HD; we'd have to identify which wireless protocol Sony are using (if they are, which they're not. )

This may be why the rumored spec for the NGP is 720P media out to a TV when it doesn't have a hardwired video out.

The rumoured specs for a device with no announced TV out is 720p? I don't put in truck in such rumours. The rumours were NGP would be as powerful as PS3 leading some to speculate a 4 SPE Cell. And what of the rumours of a dedicated phsyics processor in Wii based on developer comments? The evidence for TV connectivity in NGP is basically non existent.

Intel demoed WiDi last year and it's supported in Sandy bridge equipped laptops. The on-the-fly encryption requiring a fast CPU or dedicated hardware.

WiDi is in the 60GHz band, not compatible with WiFi n. And as you say, needs a lot of grunt or a dedicated processor. If NGP had a dedicated video encoder, don't you think Sony would be listing that in its specs? Are we to believe that Sony have designed in support for WiDi or WiGig, picking whichever format without any TV standard being settled on, and yet are keepng quiet about this and not showing it in their cheesy lifestyle promo videos? If NGP could wirelessly beam its display onto a TV, I'd expect to see this feature being demo'd - what's the sense in overlooking what's a great differentaitor?!

The point was; to develop a game for PS Suite on the PSP2 with features supported by Android requires at a minimum you support those features on the PSP2.

Not necessarily. Just because the OS may support a feature, doesn't mean an application or framework has to support all those features. eg. Flash doesn't have to support joysticks even though Windows does. UE3.0 doesn't have to support mouse input even though mouse input is supported in the PS3 OS. Android may provide certain input features, but the PSS framework may use just a subset, or even implement it's own systems independent of the OS - which is far more plausible if Sony are looking for portability. Basically they'll want to distance PSS as much as possible from the OS and not be tied to any features.

Since the hardware is similar, the PSP2 OS can support the same. Will it, yes because that can be used in game for control.

Fully programmable hardware can support any feature, irrespective of processing architecture (MIPS, ARM, PPC, x86, SPARC, 68000) as long as it has enough horsepower. Failing that you can use dedicated ICs, but these are an unnecessary complication 99 times out of a 100 and you'll just use up a bit of the CPU time.

Was the hardware design of the PSP2 influenced by Android 2.3 tablet designs, yes.

i disagree. I think NGP's design is based on a series of performance evaluations and contract deals. There are few options for delivering top-tier portable performance from a battery-powered device.

What the above means for the PSP2 is that most Android OS features will be supported by the PSP2 OS. Since the hardware is similar it can. This is what I was attempting to get across.

But it's not a valid conclusion. PSS is indenpedent of OS, like Flash. It isn't tied to OS functions, and doesn't need whatever OS it runs on to have particular OS features. PS3 supports joystick input. Flash runs on PS3. Ergo Flash has joystick input. Ergo every Os Flash runs on must have joystick input. We know that's not true.

All a framework really needs is access to IO and display, with whatever memory mangement the OS enforces. What the framework then provides in its SDK is entirely up to it. The OS may provide library calls for handwriting recognition, but the framework can not offer these to developers, or provide access to whatever OS options are present, or most likely by far will have it's own implementation so that every application gets the same data and results regardless of what the OS platform does. Otherwise programs could not be trusted to give the same results on different OSes if using OS routines instead of PSS routines.

Wireless HDMI of any sort is going to require realtime encoding of the video stream.

It would be far more feasible to just include an HDMI port.

Indeedy. If TV out was part of Sony's intentions, they'd have provided an HDMI out as the cheapest solution, even if they cater for a high end SKU with wireless display. And as a business move, intending TV connectivity but saying nothing at all about it is a Bad Move!

 

[jeff_rigby]

Wireless HDMI of any sort is going to require realtime encoding of the video stream. Realtime encoding of a 480p video stream to reduce bandwidth requirements is still going to require a fairly significant amount of processing time. 480p is still going to require ~1 Gbit/s uncompressed. And Wireless-N only claims up to 300 Mbit/s. I'm sure if Sony wants to cut their battery time by half or more in order to enable it, it might be possible.

It would be far more feasible to just include an HDMI port.

Regards,
SB

It's not truly HDMI to HDMI so we don't have the bandwidth to deal with. Power on the other had to encrypt the already compressed video (If streaming media) using the vector processor in an Open CL GPU might be excessive.

Rethinking my post, while it might be possible to wireless stream media to a "HDMI HDCP wireless" TV using "N", the NGP when playing a game might not be able to compress too, it wouldn't have to encrypt but maybe power consumption in that case, as you mention, might be excessive. Does the NGP have hardware H.264 encoding?

The lack of any TV output in my mind of such and obviously useful and desired feature meant that there was some other planned way to provide it, I.E wireless.

 

[Arwin]

Let's assume for now it doesn't have video out. We do know that is has a docking port for which functionality has not currently been disclosed. Much more than that is pretty much speculation. I think it should be clear that if they want to do it, they will add it later or add it to a hardware revision. For what it is worth, I never used video out on my PSP, and I am willing to bet that if you look at statistics for video out use of the PSP, they're going to be very low, so I wouldn't be surprised if they made this a very low priority for now. If it turns out to be something in high demand, you can rest assured they will add it later, but right now they probably have the right focus and that is getting the lowest SKU of the device out at a max starting price of $299. I'm willing to bet that HDMI support costs a lot of money still, on such a small device. If you'll get it, it will be later built into a docking station that comes in various shapes and sizes including one with a built-in projector no doubt.

Everything, and I mean everything about this device seems to suggest a lot of consumer acceptance research having taken place for this device and its features, and I'm willing to bet that a low entry price is a very high priority. I think Qriocity also helps here at least in Sony's vision, in that in theory you should be able to watch your movies on the PSP2, and then continue watching on any other device that supports it rather than having to hook up your PSP2 to the TV, the stereo and what not.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Does the NGP have hardware H.264 encoding?

Doubtful but not impossible.

Just to put things into perspective even Brazos and Atom are unable to encode x264 in realtime. For 720p a 1.6 ghz Brazos E-350 system can only encode at 14.1 fps. Atom D510 at 1.66 ghz is even lower at 13.3 fps. (courtesy of Anandtech)

I'm not sure there's any ARM systems out there that do x264 encoding.

For such low power devices at most you may get hardware decode assistence. It's assumed that video will be encoded on far more capable systems.

Regards,
SB

 

[jeff_rigby]

Doubtful but not impossible.

Just to put things into perspective even Brazos and Atom are unable to encode x264 in realtime. For 720p a 1.6 ghz Brazos E-350 system can only encode at 14.1 fps. Atom D510 at 1.66 ghz is even lower at 13.3 fps. (courtesy of Anandtech)

I'm not sure there's any ARM systems out there that do x264 encoding.

For such low power devices at most you may get hardware decode assistence. It's assumed that video will be encoded on far more capable systems.

Regards,
SB

The ARM A9 Cortex (Neon) based Rockchip RK29xx for Android tablets supports H.264 hardware encode/decode for Skype, has a built-in HDMI and a host of other features all in one SOC. But the GPU only supports 60 million triangles/sec. No Skype support on the NGP?

Arwin "Let's assume for now it doesn't have media out." Possible.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Rethinking my post, while it might be possible to wireless stream media to a "HDMI HDCP wireless" TV using "N"...

But waht TV would support this? What protocol would be used?

Does the NGP have hardware H.264 encoding?

AFAIK there's no such thing. Fixstars Codecsys CE-10 for PS3 was offering realtime encoding using Cell's execllent performance, but the results are rubbish. Encoding is done in non-realtime; only people like OnLive are offering a solution for realtime encoding. Actually I think they developed a hardware system for realtime encoding, but it's not to be expect in a handheld.

Edit : I'm being really stupid there! I'm thinking in the computing space, but many portables have realtime video compression and camcorders can definitely do HD h.264. So there is the option of a hardware encoder.

The lack of any TV output in my mind of such and obviously useful and desired feature meant that there was some other planned way to provide it, I.E wireless.

Doesn't the lack of any mention of TV output in any form convince you more that it's not in, rather than there are secret, highly costly solutions?

As others say, the expansion port hints at docking bay solutions. It's quite possible there'll be a docking bay with HDMI for portable media, which will cover that feature but prevent handheld game use. If said as-yet-pure-speculation docking bay supported blue tooth, there's the outside chance of Sony implementing my Grand Vision. the inbuilt camera could work with Move too. The end result would be a titchy package that brings party gaming to any house, as long as accompanied by a large back of peripherals! But Sony haven't even vaguely hinted that they're looking at this. I can't believe they are intending that, and it'll only be when someone else does it that they'll bring out a new dock or something to compete in my pessimistic view.