Sony to Target Portable Gaming Market with NGP

Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE) has announced its next generation portable entertainment system (codename: NGP), which aims to deliver the portable entertainment experience. NGP will make its debut at the end of this year, 2011.

It is designed to offer interactive entertainment now available on PlayStation. The new system offers a combination of gaming and social connectivity within a real world context, made possible by leveraging SCE’s experience from both PSP (PlayStation Portable) and PlayStation3 (PS3) entertainment systems.

By having both Wi-Fi and 3G network connectivity, together with various applications, NGP will enable more possibilities for users to “encounter,” “connect,” “discover,” “share” and “play” with friends wherever they are, says the company. 

Sony is not the only company that is eyeing the portable gaming market. Interactive entertainment company Nintendo has also decided to offer portable entertainment in 3D – without the need for special glasses. The Nintendo 3DS system will be available in either Cosmo Black or Aqua Blue, and will have a suggested retail price of $249.99. (Read: How to Play 3D Games without Glasses)

Sony’s NGP incorporates a multi-touch 5-inch organic light emitting display (OLED) as the front display. A high-performance CPU / GPU combined with OLED enables rich, visually striking graphics for both games and other digital entertainment content. 

The new system also incorporates a multi-touch pad on the rear, and together with the front touch display, NGP offers new game play allowing users to interact directly with games in three dimension-like motion, through “touch, grab, trace, push and pull” moves of the fingers.

Every game title for NGP will be provided with a space called “LiveArea” where users can share the fun and excitement with other players. 

Users will have access to the latest information of games provided from SCE and 3rd party developers and publishers through PlayStation Network.

Additionally, NGP users will be able to view an “Activity” log that is constantly updated with accomplishments from users who are playing the same game, which in turn can trigger active real-time communication among users.

SCE will also provide location-based services on NGP as part of the basic features utilizing PlayStation Network. The new application called “Near,” developed specifically for this service and the network, will be pre-installed in the system to let users find out what their friends in the vicinity are playing now or what they were playing recently. 

Users can meet their friends and new players virtually, regardless of what games they are playing, simply by sharing their game information across different dimensions of time and distance.

NGP adopts a new game medium, a small flash memory based card, dedicated for NGP software titles. Taking advantage of the flash memory feature, this card can store the full software titles plus add-on game content or the game save data directly on to the card.

By adopting flash memory based card, SCE will be able to provide game cards with higher capacity in the future, allowing developers to store more game data to deliver rich and immersive games.

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NGP will also come equipped with two cameras on its front and rear, as well as three motion sensors, gyroscope, accelerometer and electronic compass, all of which are designed to enable users to enjoy the world of entertainment that is linked with real life experiences, says the company.

Moreover, PlayStation Suite (PS Suite), which is also announced today (Jan. 27), will closely coordinate with NGP. The newly developed and released game content for Android-based portable devices can also be enjoyed on NGP. 

SCE will promote NGP toward the launch as the next generation portable entertainment platform and deploy various measures to further expand the portable gaming market, it says.