PSP2-Sony NGP hands on and transportable market investigation

With Sony's inauguration of the new NGP console, the battle for dominance in the handheld market is about to heat up. Tom Hog gins reports from Tokyo.

With their Next Generation Portable and PlayStation Suite, an scheme that supplies PlayStation branded games to certified Android devices – Sony have made a sweeping broadside to turn the tussle into an all-out war. The NGP will be going head-to-head with Nintendo’s 3DS, while PlayStation Suite will be looking to eat into Apple’s dominance in the smart phone gaming marketplace. For all the talk of this being a Nintendo, Sony and Apple three-way battle, it’s easy to forget Google. The Californian search engine giant has gained a lot of traction recently as their Android devices become more admired, and this partnership with Sony will come as a huge boost. It will also be interesting to see how Microsoft respond with their Windows 7 phones as this particular competition reaches boiling point.

While a comparison between the 3DS and NGP is impossible at this stage, the question of what Sony would do to combat Nintendo’s glasses-free 3D revolution was answered fairly definitely, with sheer technical grunt that produces visuals on a par with the PlayStation 3 and a lot of bullet point features. Let’s list them: 5-inch OLED screen, dual-analogue sticks, 3G and Wi-Fi connectivity, front and rear touchpad’s, front and rear cameras, motion control, ‘three-axis’ compass and GPS.

Even in the hands, the NGP’s oval shape is terrifically comfortable and ergonomic, and the screen is genuinely spectacular. The console’s dual analogue sticks –a long awaited addition to a handy gaming device. Are very similar in feel to the PlayStation 3 controller and are perfectly placed. However, in the current build, the sticks and face buttons feel strangely little, miniaturized out of requirement to incorporate the bigger screen size. Take up any more space and you would have to make an already relatively bulky portable device even bigger. It is surprisingly light, however, estimably on par with the first PSP despite the extra features. According to Sony, it’s light because there is no disc drive, the NGP using yet another Sony proprietary format, the ‘NVG’ flash card. No whirring disc drive also saves on battery life, as does the OLED screen not requiring an extra backlight.

So the device itself is effortlessly inspiring. But while Sony has insisted the price will be aimed at a sweet spot to entice consumers, the technological largesse will almost certainly come with a hefty price tag.