Yes, it’s about 1:30AM here in the States, but it’s the middle of the afternoon in Tokyo, where Sony held a press conference at the Park Prince Tokyo Tower Hotel, with over 1000 people in attendance according to Jeff Rubenstein from PlayStation.Blog.
Kaz Hirai launched the event with the statement, “We’re here to discuss strategies and possibilities for the PlayStation business moving forward.” Indeed. He then showed off a video entitled “Cyber Society” that Sony first unveiled at E3 2005.
After some flowery and grandiose speech about the future of gaming and how that future is now, he finally dropped the payload. “How do we deliver a PlayStation-level experience to a wider audience?”
The answer: PlayStation Suite, which brings the PlayStation gaming platform to Android phones and tablets.
PlayStation Suite is a PlayStation development framework akin to Steam which allows games to run on any certified Android hardware, leaving the choice of hardware to the end user. As long as your Android-capable hardware meets the specs for the Suite, you can run PlayStation Suite games on it. Hirai called it a “hardware neutral game framework.”
The initial launch will include a PlayStation Store on Android, which has a lot of classic PSX games available. A demo of Cool Boarders 2 was shown at the press conference.
So, alright, we get old PSX games on our phones. Cool.
But where’s the PSP 2?
Of course, the first question that arises with gaming on Android is: What about controls?
To that end, Hirai announced “New Generation Portable”, which is, yes, the PSP 2. He mentioned future-y things like augmented reality and converging real worlds with virtual. Who cares. Hardware specs:
- Dual analog sticks (SixAxis, not nubs. Actual sticks)
- 5″ OLED (!) display, 960×544 resolution
- 3G
- GPS
- Front and rear touchpads
- Electronic compass on three axes
- Front and rear cameras
The rear touch panel is the same size and placement as the front screen, so you can tap the “back” of the screen and interact with the game. Sony seems heavily focused on motion controls with this platform.
The press conference went on to show off games and tech demos, including Hot Shots Golf, Gravity Daze, Killzone, Reality Fighters, Smart As, Broken, LBP, Little Deviants, WipEout, Resistance, and Uncharted. They also announced a new lobby-ish UI called “LiveArea”. Err. Steam.. I mean, Xbox Live. err.. I mean LiveArea. They had to do something.
They also talked about location-based gaming, showing off something called “Near”. For example, Near shows where you’ve traveled around town. You can see the most popular games played in a physical area. Think “Foursquare for video games.” A lot of people are playing a cool multi-player game nearby? Near + digital downloads will allow you to buy the game and join in.
Next, they talked augmented reality gaming, much like Nintendo is doing with the 3Ds. In the example shown, Hot Shots Golf. Once you line up a shot, you can enter first person view, and use the NGP as a window into the game. Look at your feet, see your feet AND the ball. The NGP camera takes in the real world and augments it with the game. Very slick.
The NGP is also fully Suite compatible… I suppose that means NGP is running some sort of Android, but it’s also hardware compatible with all PSP titles available for download. If you’ve got a library on your PSN account, you’re okay here.
Overall the NGP looks like a very exciting piece of hardware that should compete nicely with the 3DS while catering to the more “core gamer” market that tends to flock to the PlayStation platform.
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