PSVita (Successor to PSP, was PSP2 then NGP)

[abigsmurf]

The press conference will be at 6am GMT on Thursday for those who want to wake up early to watch it.

[Mr M0by]

I'd certainly get up at 6 to watch, I'd be up from 7 otherwise anyway, but is anyone going to be showing it? And I take it it will be in English, given all the publishers that are said to be flying over there.

[Neon Ignition]

I'm up but as the 3DS conference finally taught me, games conferences are universally awful. I'm just gonna wait until 7am and then see all the announcements in one go.

[abigsmurf]

http://kotaku.com/5742423/the-first-official-shot-of-the-psp2

Faaaaaake

Stylus is too long, They wouldn't use the exact same case as the Xperia play, memory stick label for two card ports, one of which is SD.

That said, I was wrong about the Sony giving the PS3 slim such a tacky finish...

[Neon Ignition]

That's a really lazy mock up, they could have at least changed the font

[Brad]

psp2 will not use pro duo cards. Worst. mockup. EVAR lol.

[Sam The Man]

I believe that pic to be the PSPhone

[CMcK]

Apparently these are the final specs of the PSP2 based on a debug kit:

http://www.01net.com/editorial/527269/decouvrez-la-configuration-de-la-psp-2-en-avant-premiere/

Link is to a French site. If the spec is genuine it looks like a powerful system. Going to be expensive as well. I would think even high end smart phones won't get to that level until 2012 at the earliest.

[abigsmurf]

Spec summary:

Screen: 5″ OLED multi-touch screen
Control: A Multi-touch trackpad (rumored to be on the rear of the unit), four face buttons, two shoulder buttons, two analog sticks, directional pad
Resolution: 960 x 544
CPU: Quad-core ARM Cortex A9
GPU: PowerVR SGX 543 MP4+
RAM: 1GB LPDDR2 in the Debug unit, with 512 MB possible in the retail unit
Storage: 16GB flash internal (like the PSP Go) and an SD slot
Connectivity: Wi-fi, 3G, and Bluetooth

Yep, that's a beast. Samsung have announced they'll use those CPUs for tablets but it won't be until 2012 at the earliest. It'll be more powerful than the iphone 5 (which'll probably only use dual core versions of those chips) and it'll have much less overhead.

[Neon Ignition]

I know Sony love to 'future proof' their systems but after the debacle of the PSP's early years, the Go and the PS3 launch I still can't believe they seem to be repeating themselves with this. If those stats are correct, the best they can hope for is it repeats the PSP's situation and holds decent turnover in its latter years which is risky given the rate of change within the handheld/portable device sector.

[abigsmurf]

I'd half expect them to offer the 3G version as a carrier subsidised option and a Wifi one for much less.

[Guts]

So for us technically challenged: how do those specs compare to say, PS3?

[abigsmurf]

Comparing a PS3 to it is probably like comparing a motorbike to a car however:

The iphone 4 contains a single core ARM Cortex A8 and a single core older version of the PowerVR chip.

This contains a quad core A9 and a quad core, newer PowerVR chip.

It's literally 4 times as powerful as a current iphone or ipad (although a bit of that power will be lost due to the difficulty of fully utilising all cores).

So look at the Rage and citadel games on the iphone and scale it up (although it's worth noting that both those games are simple in terms of geometry and get most of their looks from hi res textures).

In terms of PS3? It won't be as powerful, it simply won't have the raw processing power. However I wouldn't be surprised if it can output graphics that are near impossible to tell from a PS3 game, especially on a smaller screen.

This is all assuming these specs aren't made up though.

[Guts]

I see, thanks.

[Sam The Man]

I am a bit suprised to hear that the retail unit will only have 512mb ram. I have been hearing that an ambitious modern game thats made today could use as much as 1gb ram Or will 512mb really do the trick?