NGP Weekend Thoughts

Lots of news and rumours all over the shop last week to address, all tinged with the harsh dose of reality that is the Japanese tsunami, if I see any poster on the web moaning about it delaying their next game or console purchase, I'll buy a ticket and pummel the writer in person.

It was good to see tweets from a lot of the Japanese developers/media I follow to show that they were safe, in this big globalised world of ours, it feels like we're all in these disasters together.

Anyway, first issue - this 3DS and NGP cost three times as much to develop for story.

A) That's just one developer's opinion.

B) It kind of ignores the fact that devs can reuse so much code and other assets from previous games, so easy is the NGP to port to. These don't have to be for remakes and ports, just grabbing building schematics and reskinning, reusing sound effects or tweaking existing animation systems for games isn't going to piss off players in the big scheme of things.

C) Big studios, the ones that can afford to develop big games, already have the budget.

D) NGP isn't just about big games, studios can stick with developing small ones if they like.

Next up is the rumoured NGP release in Europe on 11/11/11 which keeps going.

The good news is that Sony hasn't denied it, yet. And it does makes sense that Sony tries to launch in a territory where PSP struggled a bit - it knows it'll have a hit in Japan so why not concentrate the launch somewhere else, where the hype will be all the greater.

Finally, Xperia Play got a good dose of news this week with a UK launch date and further game announcements. The weird thing is the number of comments across the web who are doing an "either, or" decision with the Play and NGP - Sony and Sony Ericsson really need to do some explaining about how different they are, I see Play as "now" technology and NGP as "the future".

Also, good to see SonyE try to get the Xperia Play into gaming as well as phone stores, not sure how many it'll ship, but just spreading the message wider has to be a good thing.

If gamers aren't getting that, then both companies need to make some effort to explain it better.

Your thoughts please...