Sony's Next Generation Portable unveiling - PSP2 in disguise

[Exophase]

It's good that they got rid of UMD. That had a really negative impact on battery life.

I'm actually thinking that Android support (so long as the games/OS and cores software don't run on it) is a great idea. Would give it a competitive angle that 3DS can't match, in addition to being a really solid Android platform itself. Sony wouldn't have to do an awful lot to make it available either.

The reason I think Sony won't do it is because it might hurt games sales. I'm sure Sony will still sell at well under phone/tablet margins with the expectation of making it up on licensing. But while attachment rate might go down I don't think there'll be more people forgoing expensive PSP2 games to buy a bunch of Android games than there will be people who will buy the phone for Android then buy the must-have PSP2 games once they already have the platform.

 

[patsu]

No TV Out. There is a proprietary dock port similar to the one used on the Go.

Any public info on that port ?

 

[Gitaroo]

the PowerVR SGX 543 MP4+ use shader model 4.1 or higher right? Does that mean similar effect like fur shading, motion blur etc can look better than on Ps3?

 

[DeadlyNinja]

the PowerVR SGX 543 MP4+ use shader model 4.1 or higher right? Does that mean similar effect like fur shading, motion blur etc can look better than on Ps3?

I'm pretty sure fur shading isn't actually a shader. Not sure about motion blur though. I was never one to pay attention to how well the video card can blur my graphics. I hate DOF too btw.

 

[Squilliam]

What about dynamic clocking? Are they giving us battery life figures for less demanding games but with higher end games we'd have to expect only a couple of hours of playtime for something like Uncharted?

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Plan B: Sell a wireless HDMI adapter accessory to plug in to the TV and connect like that. For those who have a PS3, the PS3 can be that "wireless HDMI accessory".

You mean WirelessHD? The current WirelessHD stuff I see for sale costs a lot of money. I don't see how Soyn could get that into an NGP without a silly price, whereas an HDMI port would have been cheap.

So "PlayStation®Suite" is a framework to target Android and PSP2, but building 2 seperate binaries?

Yep. It'll allow better hardware utilisation on NGP. Think of it like Sony's brand of Unreal Engine with different binaries for different platforms as needed - PS3 should get its own rendition too, although it hasn't be named in the PS Suite releases so I'm starting to wonder if Sony are dropping the ball with that one.

greatly annoyed by the lack of UMD drive, hope there will be a way to transfer the games through wlan or something like that. Hope BC will be feasible at all (outside the PSN-Mini titles).

It's not. No PSP compatibility, so game transfers, as Vysez linked, are unnecessary. Ironically future PS Suite games should be BC with new PSP hardware, but native games may well not be.

 

[Lazy8s]

The SGX545 is PowerVR's DirectX10 part, not a 543 of any variation.

After seeing the Epic Citadel ports at CES, I figured this would be part of the demonstration. The multiple characters running around and the added detail look great!

 

[patsu]

http://kotaku.com/5744900/ngp-battery-life-will-be-comparable-to-the-psps

A game creator familiar with the NGP development kit told Kotaku that Sony's powerhouse portable is proving to have better battery life than the PSP 3000 on current kits, though readers should note that finished gaming hardware doesn't always run at the exact same specs as development kits. Our source credits the NGP's efficient chips and the fact that its games run off of flash media, as opposed to the discs that spun in most models of the PSP.

 

[NathansFortune]

The current kits are built on the 45nm node, PSP-3000 uses 65nm chips and has the wasteful UMD drive. I understand that NGP will launch with the 45nm parts, but Sony want to get 32/28nm parts for an internal revision out of the door.

Interesting piece of knowledge. If Sony had waited until 2012 to launch they could have gone with a slider design by using 28nm chips and lowering the cooling requirements. In the end it was decided that waiting for foundries to get to 28nm was too hit and miss and went with the brick design. I remember talking about 28nm delay at the end of last year, this is what prompted that talk. Sony decided against slider on a number of foundries' inability to deliver 28nm this year.

 

[Deleted member 7537]

http://kotaku.com/5744900/ngp-battery-life-will-be-comparable-to-the-psps

So, 4-5 hours. That would confirme Eurogamer info.

 

[Rangers]

Interesting tweet from John Carmack

ID_AA_Carmack John Carmack
Low level APIs will allow the Sony NGP to perform about a generation beyond smart phones with comparable specs.

Nice. Since no smartphone even approaches these specs yet anyway.

One concern as a tech noob, with a quad core CPU but I guess, just a single GPU, isn't the design possibly overly CPU weighted? It's the GPU that makes things look good after all. Seems like a quad CPU +dual GPU, or dual CPU+dual GPU, would have been better, if possible.

Also, my one biggest gripe towards the NGP specs remains, they should have included 1Gb RAM. All other specs are above and beyond the call of duty, yet RAM is just mediocre (assuming 512, which since the rest of the leaked specs were true seems likely). It also would have given the box one clear edge over PS360, whereas now it has none.

 

[corduroygt]

Ok. did know that and dont blame Sony for going flash.
Still I`d like to know if there will be a way to push my UMDs onto the new console.

No, older UMD-only games will be made DD-only to provide competition for the $1-10 iOS market with much better quality games. They can price them that low since those games already run their course on the market.

 

[eastmen]

Interesting tweet from John Carmack




Nice. Since no smartphone even approaches these specs yet anyway.

One concern as a tech noob, with a quad core CPU but I guess, just a single GPU, isn't the design possibly overly CPU weighted? It's the GPU that makes things look good after all. Seems like a quad CPU +dual GPU, or dual CPU+dual GPU, would have been better, if possible.

Also, my one biggest gripe towards the NGP specs remains, they should have included 1Gb RAM. All other specs are above and beyond the call of duty, yet RAM is just mediocre (assuming 512, which since the rest of the leaked specs were true seems likely). It also would have given the box one clear edge over PS360, whereas now it has none.

Its the same as in the ps3 , cell is normaly credited with helping the rsx .



battery life is a big concern with me. I also need to see what games its going to launch with and around launch to see if i buy it.

The only sony game franshise i'm into is uncharted , everything else isn't a big deal to me.

I'm hoping some western devs target this platform.


A data contract on the other hand would be an instant no buy for me .

 

[scently]

Interesting tweet from John Carmack




Nice. Since no smartphone even approaches these specs yet anyway.

One concern as a tech noob, with a quad core CPU but I guess, just a single GPU, isn't the design possibly overly CPU weighted? It's the GPU that makes things look good after all. Seems like a quad CPU +dual GPU, or dual CPU+dual GPU, would have been better, if possible.

Also, my one biggest gripe towards the NGP specs remains, they should have included 1Gb RAM. All other specs are above and beyond the call of duty, yet RAM is just mediocre (assuming 512, which since the rest of the leaked specs were true seems likely). It also would have given the box one clear edge over PS360, whereas now it has none.

Ehm... read the OP, it is a quad-core GPU, the SGX543MP4 with an added "+" sign at the end which could imply that it is better than a stock model.

As for the RAM, the most accurate leak before today's reveal (which was spot on btw) mentions a dedicated VRAM of 128 MB and a 1 GB system RAM, although they speculated that since it was a devkit the retail system will probably come with a 512 MB system RAM plus the dedicated VRAM will give it a total of 640 MB RAM.

 

[Rurouni]

One concern as a tech noob, with a quad core CPU but I guess, just a single GPU, isn't the design possibly overly CPU weighted? It's the GPU that makes things look good after all. Seems like a quad CPU +dual GPU, or dual CPU+dual GPU, would have been better, if possible.

SGX543MP4+
The MP part should indicate that it is a multi-core/processor variant.. the 4 part maybe 4 cores? the + part maybe Sony special sauce?

 

[Ailuros]

Nice. Since no smartphone even approaches these specs yet anyway.

You can expect though something about half of it this year. It'll get trickier next year.

One concern as a tech noob, with a quad core CPU but I guess, just a single GPU, isn't the design possibly overly CPU weighted? It's the GPU that makes things look good after all. Seems like a quad CPU +dual GPU, or dual CPU+dual GPU, would have been better, if possible.

The SGX543 4MP is a quad core multi processor GPU. At 200MHz each core is about 1.5-2x times faster than a SGX540 in the GalaxyS smart-phones/tablets.

Also, my one biggest gripe towards the NGP specs remains, they should have included 1Gb RAM. All other specs are above and beyond the call of duty, yet RAM is just mediocre (assuming 512, which since the rest of the leaked specs were true seems likely). It also would have given the box one clear edge over PS360, whereas now it has none.

What kind of texture compression do they use on PS3? (yes it's an honest question). In case it should be anything in the 4bpp region, PVR-TC has also 2bpp texture compression. Carmack said himself that the Rage download will size around 1.4GB with 2bpp PVR-TC, while if they would have used 4bpp TC the size would had been around 2GB.

SGX543MP4+
The MP part should indicate that it is a multi-core/processor variant.. the 4 part maybe 4 cores? the + part maybe Sony special sauce?

The next revision will have a 4MP++ and the uber-next a 4MPw/cheese (tm) *grin*

 

[DeanA]

http://kotaku.com/5744900/ngp-battery-life-will-be-comparable-to-the-psps

That's interesting, as all the development kits use a power adapter.. I don't believe any developer has kits that run off batteries - or, for that matter, even have space for a battery!

I believe speculation on battery life is just that.. pure speculation. I've no idea where this 4-5 hour number that's bouncing around on the web came from. It was mentioned from 'a source' on Eurogamer, and has then been copy-pasta'd everywhere..

Dean

 

[Rurouni]

I'm wondering about how PSP2 will handle PSP games... maybe that + thing should help PSP2 emulate all the PSP graphics function and capabilities (which if it's true then it should help for emulating PS2 also.. something that PS3 have a hard time doing it).

 

[zed]

GOOD
- nice and big
- screen
- no phone
- cant connect to tv ( seriously ppl wanted this )
- android

BAD
- touch screen front
- price (im guessing $300+)
- dual cameras
- battery life (Im guessing 5 hrs or less)

UNDECIDED
- touch input back (better than having a touchscreen, but will u accidently trigger things?)

- though battery + price perhaps should go here, but Im leaning towards thinking theyre not gonna be good

 

[Ailuros]

I think we've established so far that the NPG won't be running Android.

Wow interesting. This would seem to strengthen the legitimacy (in my mind) of Nvidia's Tegra going quad core and be out on devices this Fall.

I missed that one. And a handheld gaming console has what in common exactly with tablet/smart-phone SoCs? It'll take dearest NV a couple of generations to reach the graphics power of the NPG 4MP in case no-one noticed.