Earlier this week Sony made a major announcement to take some of Nintendo’s 3DS thunder with the announcement of the Next-Generation Portable, the code-named successor to the PSP. Checking-off all of the rumors that had floated around the ‘Net for the last few weeks, the NGP looks a hell of a lot like the PSP. This time, however, it’s got a front touchscreen, a touchpad on the back, two analog sticks(!!!!!), 3G support(!!!!), flash cartridges for the games (no more discs and UMD!!!), and apparently enough power to run PS3 games.
Looking at what Sony announced, it looks like the NGP is awesome, and the announcements of fully featured Uncharted, Killzone, Resistance, Call of Duty, and LittleBigPlanet games for the device already cement that this is going to be one hell of a machine. There’s even GPS-enabled location-based gaming with an app called “Near,” which looks pretty cool Sure, Sony could screw it up with a $500 price tag, something they’ve been known to do in the past, but for the here and now it’s not hard to be at least a little excited. The NGP will be coming out this holiday. Let’s see how this handheld showdown pans out.
