So, last night, the dreams of the people were finally realized with Sony finally revealing the PSP 2, which they've codenamed the Next Generation Portable, or NGP.
As you can see, this marvelous, sexy sleek bitch right here has two analog sticks - note, not "analog nubs" like the one piece of garbage that the original PSP had, but two real controller-like analog sticks. This wonderful fact now fills my own requirement to buy one.
The PSP started off as a wonderful, magical device. You could play movies, you could browse the internet while listening to your favorite music, but most importantly, you could play video games. The system was powerful, and with only the Game Boy and the new Nintendo DS to compare it to, the graphics were mind blowing. To be able to play games like Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time on the go in the car or on a plane was like a fabled dream that had finally seen the light of day. The one major prevalent issue with the system, however, was the lack of a second analog stick.
Traditionally, there are two sticks per controller for your average controller. The left stick controls movement, and the right stick controls camera movement. That's more or less the standard. Without that second analog stick for camera controls on the device, it meant that all camera function had to be remapped to buttons like the D-Pad or a combination of pressing different buttons, which meant that it was extremely difficult to move your character and the camera at the same time. Any game that required you to do so usually suffered dramatically for it - case and point, the aforementioned Prince of Persia remakes for the PSP. This meant that any game that had a fixed camera was almost guaranteed to be of higher quality than a game that didn't, assuming the developers didn't have their heads up their asses.
Hopefully with this fundamental hardware flaw out of the way, maybe we'll actually see some games that are worth a damn. Keeping my custom firmware updated on my PSP 1000 is such a pain, I'd rather just have some good games that are worth the money! Kudos Sony, you have peaked my interest.
Some things we know about the NGP:
-5 inch screen
-960x540 resolution
-Contains gyroscopes, accelerometers, compass and a touch-screen OLED
-2 microphones, 2 cameras, built-in GPS
-Has both Wi-Fi, 3G and Bluetooth
-Slated for release the end of this year, no price set yet
Some of the announced Game Line-up includes:
Uncharted
Killzone
Resistance
WipeOut
LittleBigPlanet
Call of Duty
