Yesterday, Sony took its NGP to the world's biggest developer meeting to show off some of its tricks. There has been a host of different comments appearing across the gaming sites, I'll try and summarise them here, and if anything new pops up will tack it on:
Eurogamer notes that the game cards will come in 2GB and 4GB versions. that sounds quite feeble compared to a dual-layer DVD or Blu-ray, but graphic data will be reduced to just that needed for the NGP's screen. Also, Sega and Nintendo grew the memory on their carts over the years, so 8GB (if its ever needed) isn't a big ask.
The processors are being turned down to prevent the unit melting and the battery running out. Sony is saying that its performance was misreported, but its odd that the company did nothing to counter this misreporting for the six weeks since NGP's original unveiling. hmmm!
VG247 showed off an awesome augmented reality trick where he took a photo of a dinosaur on the floor that the NGP then modelled so it came alive on the screen. Imagine games where you can choose from your house what you want to use to fight another player, or solve a problem in a puzzle game. :)
Kotaku points out that the Wi-Fi only model can still do the location-based gaming and social features by using Skyhook. And here's a new video of Uncharted in action.
Engadget has the presentation slide deck which points out that the cameras are really for gaming use, not for video chat and goes into some detail on how it uses real world objects for reference points, not the cards that Invizimals or 3DS games use.
Joystiq has some video of the big screen showing off more of
Little Deviants. Can't believe they wouldn't put a direct video feed on the screen though!
Partially NGP related was Epic showing the new version of
Unreal Engine 3, which is all kinds of awesome and will produce the best looking games for NGP compared to any portable, even the souped up
iPad 2.
Finally,
GamesRadar, has some very nice hi-res pics of the demo unit. For some bizarre reason, I think the rear view is the nicest.
So, has all this filling in of the details made you fancy an NGP all the more, or has the reality started to leave you cold? Let us know in the comments.
