Artifactual: Sony’s Next PSP

“The Continuum Transfunctioner”

Artifact here and I would like to talk about Sony’s new handheld gaming device.

The Internet has been abuzz all day as new pictures and details arise about Sony’s next handheld, the “NGP” (next-generation portable) unofficial tittle, aka PSP2,  aka Continuum Tranfuntioner.  That’s right, until it has an official name; I’m referring to it as the “Continuum Transfunctioner”, a mysterious and powerful device, whose mystery is only exceeded by its power…

Sony started development as early as 2008 and what we have seen so far has been nothing less than jaw dropping.  It’s no secret that Sony likes to be ahead of the curve when it comes to game hardware and it seems they’ve kept up that status again today.  Keep in mind that we don’t know everything yet but I will tell you all about what we know as of now. So get ready to be fed, baby birds.

The first thing you’ll notice is that it bears a striking resemblance to the last generation PSP.  Sony decided to stay away from the Go inspired slide screen (probably for spatial reasons) and stay with what they know works.  The system keeps their traditional button layout with a few improvements.  Most notably are a more concave D-pad and TWO analog sticks. The current projected size of the device is Approx. 182.0 x 18.6 x 83.5mm (width x height x depth).  This beast is going to be a lot bigger than a PSP-3000.  Weight is unknown at this time.

Built in are a gyroscope, compass, accelerometer and two cameras’ (front and rear facing).  Yea it’s like a Six Axis controller, Move controller and PS Eye all built into one device.  But the fun doesn’t stop there.  The real innovation comes with a touch panel on the back of the device.  This is something you’re going to see a lot of in years to come, especially on hand held devices like smart phones and tablets.  Of course it wouldn’t be a proper handheld device if it didn’t have the built in microphone and speakers.

The screen is bigger than its predecessor with a 5 inch OLED multi touch screen featuring a 16:9 aspect ratio and resolution of 960×540 with 16 million colors.  I’m a huge fan of OLED screens as they really show rich vibrant colors across the board.  The only down side is their life span, these things have been known to die in just a matter of years.  I hope that’s not the case here.  Also, you might wonder why Sony didn’t include a 3D screen what with Nintendo’s 3DS around the corner.  It looks like they decided it just wasn’t cost effective.  Maybe we’ll see a 3D version in the future, who knows.

The sheer performance power of this guy is insane. It will feature a 4 core, yea that’s right, 4 core ARM Cortex-A9 CPU and a SGXS43MP4+GPU for graphics. The old clunky UMD’s are out and games will now come on small flash memory cards or as downloads from the PSN store.  If this upsets you, I’m sorry you’re a cave man from the Stone Age who hasn’t accepted the fact that technology is getting tired of discs. And honestly having to carry around physical media for a handheld device is the most backwards thing I’ve ever seen.  I’m glad UMD’s are out for good, I never liked ‘em to begin with.

My biggest gripes with the current PSP’s are their out dated Wi-Fi connections.  My brand new PSP Go still only supports 802.11 a/b.  There is no n or even g.  That’s just mind boggling to me that they don’t have g and I have no interest in slowing down my homes wireless to allow b.  Fortunately I won’t be having that problem anymore as the “Continuum Tranfuntioner” supports all ranges from a to n.  It’s not known if you will be forced to buy one that has 3G built in, but it certainly can do that too.  Sony has big things planned for GPS functionality.  Something called “Near” will be built in and will show where other users are around you so you’ll be able to see what games are being played in specific areas. Personally, I don’t see this being used very often but it’s certainly a cool idea.  All these features sure make it sound like the Continuum Tranfuntioner can act as a smart phone on its own.  It’s got all the basic features, such as a speaker, microphone, 3G, and GPS, I wonder….

I’m not a fan of the menu system, however vibrant it may be, the rows of bubbles look something more akin to a Disney product and will require a lot more touching of the screen to get in depth with system settings.

For a long time, there was a huge complaint with the gaming community on how the PSP doesn’t have a lot of good games.  While that’s certainly not the case anymore, there’s no denying that Sony is going to make sure they don’t have that problem again.  All the great PlayStation exclusives have their own version on the way. Some of the announced games include LittleBigPlanet, Killzone, Resistance, Wipeout, Yakuza, Uncharted and even Metal Gear Solid. There’s a long list of 3rd party games in the works including Lost Planet, Little Deviants, Gravity Daze, Reality, Monster Hunter, Fighters (which looks awesome), Smart As, Broken and even Call of Duty to name a few.

You can watch how Uncharted handles here and let me tell you it looks glorious.  Pretty close to how PS3 graphics looked with launch tittle games.  Besides the impressive graphics, the game already uses the unique features of the device.  To climb vines you can rock the system back and forth or swipe your fingers across the rear touch screen. You can also sneak up on an enemy and gently touch the screen to perform a stealth kill.  I should also mention the new “camera mode” where you can view your surroundings at 360 degrees.  It’s as if you were holding a camera, you can angle and hold your device however you like to see your characters surroundings.  Maybe you’ll want to create a photo blog or take some visual notes for later. Well, feel free to snap some shots of whatever you see at any time.

OK so how much does something this heavenly cost?   Analysts have priced the device to be between $300- $350 but this would be in direct contrast to Sony saying that the device would be “affordable”.  To be honest, $350 seems to be a good reflection of this kind of hardware but I wouldn’t spend that kind of cash on it.  Will we be seeing price drop jokes on day one? I hope not.

Other unknowns are battery life and finger prints.  There has been no word yet on the battery life but don’t expect much from something this powerful.  I’m going to make a guess that it will be around 5 hours.  I have yet to see anyone talk about how badly finger prints come up on the device.

Sony is said to be working on some seriously cool stuff as far as cross platform communication to PS3 goes and we may even see some backwards compatibility and trophy support.

Rumors suggest we may see some early shipments as soon as the end of 2011.

Be sure to come back to Cross Talk for any new updates and ALWAYS tip your bartender.

Play my outro…

^{Sources : Kotaku / Gameinformer}