NGP Spec “Nothing Special” “Nowhere Near PS3”
- Categories: Games, News
- Date: Jan 31, 2011 00:10 JST
- Tags: Comparison, DS, Keitai, Marketing, PSP, Sony, Technology
The supposed “PS3 level” power of Sony’s newly announced NGP is being called into question, with technical analysis of its capabilities suggesting it is not nearly as impressive as it is hyped to be, and that it is already in imminent danger of being eclipsed by smartphones and tablets using the very same chipset it employs.
The commentary in question, from a long and quite technical analysis of the NGP announcement:
Will the NGP’s lifespan be a long one?
Put simply, the NGP’s looks feature packed and very powerful, more than enough to meet the challenge of other handhelds and smartphones. SCE appears to be investing a lot in the NGP from the start, in order to put up a good fight.
However, if we look past the hype, the capabilities of the NGP are not actually all that good. Of course, there is no way it approaches those of the PS3 either.
One major issue is that the combo of ARM Cortex-A CPU + PowerVR SGX GPU is already becoming a popular choice in smartphones and tablets. In other words, the NGP’s performance is directly comparable to those of smartphones and tablets.
This time, SCE could simply not afford the cost of developing its own CPU and GPU combo, and had to bring in a pre-existing architecture.
As a result, just looking at the chipset used shows that the uniqueness of its capabilities has been severely compromised, exposing it to comparison with similar chips.
Other devices using similar chipsets will quickly overtake it – the progress of other mobile devices is just so rapid.
[The article goes on to present some technical analysis of the NGP’s CPU and GPU, suggesting the NGP may become obsolete very quickly:]
The yearly updates of smartphones and tablets probably doom a static specification like that of the NGP to obsolescence within a few short years, leaving the hardware to compete solely on the quality of its controller, or in the case of the 3DS, its gimmicky display – time will tell whether this proves sufficient.
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It doesn't really matter if smartphones will have better hardwares. Smartphones are smartphones, and not gaming consoles. Current phones have much better hardware than PSP, yet the games are much better on the PSP than on the smartphones. As long as developers doesn't make games for smartphones, the NGP won't really have to worry about this.
Now I'm more inclined to choose the 3DS over this
lol, fail! You can't compare 3DS with smartphones, or even NGP. But still you can't compare 3DS games with PSP games. Still, with NGP epic graphic, the NDS ends up petting virtual dogs/pets with 3D screen. lame...
fanboy ahoy!
I'm buying both ...
No fucking duh you dipshits. Cause when I look at technical specs I look or vague terms like "near PS3 level" right?
Spelling fail lol!
Spelling fail highlighted! Nice correction.
Not even near . With this hardware it looks like pocket xbox1
well if it not so good then how come all those video game making companies said that it awesome?
oh also I would like to say that no mater how advanced a phone may become it still wont have 2 analog sticks
Not to mention that game companies aren't going to make handheld RPGs like Final Fantasy or Tales of.... or any other hardcore games (non-hardcore being the little dinky games they already make for cell phones) for cell phones.
i think spectral souls is pretty hardcore for a smartphone game...Strategy-RPG that is.
in japan there are heaps of mobile phone rpgs so the argument is pretty null.
@Anon 01:03 I think he is referring to the flagship titles that require more of a dedicated machine to provide a sustainable and uninterrupted good experience. No one likes to be immersed in a game and wind up receiving a call in the middle of a crucial part. It was the main reasoning for people to complain about a "PSPhone" or even a "PSP with cellular capabilities".
A phone, by virtue of being a multi-purpose device, is likely not to match up to the PSPs quality of gaming... at least not for the foreseeable future.
It is null if the consumers play more than just RPGs. So far, they have a technical demo of Uncharted. I doubt that games like that will appear in smartphones soon.
Phones are good for many things, but the PSP and DS have the difference that they are designed and supported both by 1st and 3rd parties to do exactly that.
They say it's awesome because they get paid for saying that?
Becouse they need to talk that way if they want to make money !!!
It's because of its purpose in its lifespan. NGP purpose is gaming and only that and everything else revolved around that purpose. Smartphones etc are not built for gaming purpose but only have gaming capability.
So even if the hardwares are the same there will be a definite differences when it comes to gaming.
If I compare iphone(smartphone) with NGP, I prefer NGP games because I simply not used to the controllers on-screen while gaming. Good thing NGP is the only 'smartphone' which has double analog stick.
If I compare to other handhelds, I prefer NGP simply because it's hardware capability better than other handheld. Even though it's 'bulky','last 3-5 hour', 'pay for 3g', or even 'same chip quality as other smartphones', I rather pay the price than to buy the cheap slow response of NDS touchscreen.
Because the article is judging it solely by it's hardware, and not the fact that as a hand held with a set spec, developers will be able to push that hardware to it's limits and really create some great stuff.
Agreed.
This is like comparing a Snowmobile to a Motorcycle because they may have the same engine.
... this is really, really funny.
Someone can remember me what was said by a lot of people about the 3DS and the iPhone?
Wasn't the PSP "obsolete" years ago and still managed to provide one of the best experiences (save for the single analog debacle)? It wasn't until recently that phones started matching the power of the PSP, and GoW seemed to have proven that that PSP still can duke it out with the best of them in the eyes of many.
Specialized hardware like the NGP may likely not be that powerful considering the obvious, but that doesn't mean it won't be able to keep ahead of the game in terms of power campared to the smartphones which are just "jack-af-all-trades" devices.
Even game devs have said it.
One of the best experiences? It's only in the past couple of years that decent games have started to come out for it - earlier on, it was sinking as fast as the titanic.
A better example perhaps is the DS - even worse graphics than the psp, yet it still kicked ass in both hardware and software sales.
Well, its not like its actually going to be competing with smartphones anyway. I doubt you're gonna play Monster Hunter on a Droid.
But hell that would be great
Read abou Playstation Suite and support for android platform smartphones.
Isnt every hardware obsolete after a few years these days -_-
Whats the point of this post.
same for pc and gfx card, every 6 months a new powerful model gets released.
Gfx isnt everything, look at ds. looks like crap still sells very well. if they use the system well it will be successfull.
This one will be old next year ...
Well what's the point of any sankaku post you may ask. to troll of course.
duh this is sankaku.. home of trolls
The point is that the NGP has the same hardware as smartphones, which means that smartphones will be in direct competition with it. Games have been developed for smartphones for quite some time now. And since they are also phones, they would make owning an NGP redundant.
You're delusional if you think those so called "games" on smart phones are comparable to a real game.
The most you can do is play touchscreen games. Smart phones that have keypads are not ideal for gaming.
Dodonpachi Resurrection would like a word with you.
I have a Galaxy S Phone. Its graphics ability is currently at the top for a Smart Phone, at least for another 4~6 months.
But it doesn't have the graphics gaming ability of a PSP, much less the PSP2. And playing games on a controller-less phone kind of .... sucks. Some games are great or okay with a touch-screen phone.
But putting your fingers over your game area or trying to get instant response is NOT happening with touch screens. Having real buttons, a standard OS and games is the point. Its not a phone, its a pure gaming system.
The point of this post is to rile people up, like almost every other post on Sankaku about the 3ds and NGP
Shhhh you're telling all our secrets......
damn right XD
Of course, it's actually kind of true. Sony's been touting the 'PS3 level' graphics of the NGP, but all shots of it in action so far look closer to the PS2's visuals. 3DS games don't really look all that different, but have the advantage of a 3D screen to help them stand out. I'm sure the NGP will be capable of more detailed graphics than the 3DS, but it's not really as much of a difference as it was between the original PSP and DS.
As for smartphones and tablets, I somehow doubt they'll 'eclipse' dedicated gaming hardware among gamers, unless they start offering proper dedicated controls. Even then, it would be hard to market them without support and exclusives from a company like Nintendo or Sony.
You know what will make this? Exclusives.
The only reason I bought PSP is exclusives. And that is the only reason I'll buy PSP2 (fuck NGP, that's a stupid name).
True. It's the games for the console that make people buy the console.
Yeah... sometimes I think that this site must be called SankakuTrolling instead of Sankakucomplex...
All here we know that the next year will be a newest and powerful hardware than this... but those smartphones don't last even a year on the market, except for the IOS plataform, there it's not a solid plataform like handhled console... Those are two diferent markets..
STOP FEEDING THE TROLLS!!
So an extent but Moore's law in desktops is nothing like it was back in the 90s.
Going from Core2 to i7 was not as huge a leap as 486 to Pentium or 68040 to PPC601 was.
But Moore's law is still very much alive and well in portable devices because the very architecture can be reinvented on them if needed to gain performance as they don't need to care about being able to run old software.
The Arm architecture already soundly beats X86 in Gflops per watt by a wide margin.
Moore's law is still active in the PC market as well. It's not an incredible leap but it still is a pretty big leap each generation. But you can only do so much when the die is getting hard to innovate on. They need to invent a new way to manufacture or extend the die.
X86 really needed to die about a decade ago.
There are these things called X86 translation units on the die that do nothing more then translate X86 instructions to RISC or VLWI type low level instructions.
They add a lot of complexity to designs which means more power used more die area wasted etc.
Moores law is about complexity and cost, not performance. It still holds true it just is far less visible as overall performance on a per app basis plateaus for the average user. Where as a CPU upgrade back then meant a huge boost in performance for your day to day computing now it ends up being about how fast your machine does a few very specific computationally intensive tasks or its total performance as a multitasking PC.
Exactly, it doesn't matter whether the graphics have been surpassed or not - what matters are the games. That's why apple aren't too threatening to Sony and Nintendo yet, because their games are only designed to be played in short bursts.
It's marketing bs, yes, but the same can be said about this article. This is the same for every piece of gadget and when you buy a gadget nowadays you buy the platform not just the spec of what you held in your hands.
Wait there were people who actually thought it would be like a ps3?
Still gonna buy it, fuck 3DS.
yea,some people thought i'll be something like a PS3P
You'll be something like a PS3P?! :O
Oh, people "thought".
"Some people thought" is not the as "Sony said".
I'm sorry, but we all know that we're still a bit far away from reaching such performance levels on small portables.
Still gonna buy a 3DS, fuck the NGP.
Umad bro?