NGP chips won't rival PS3 performance

By Oli Welsh Published 2 March, 2011

"The battery would last five minutes."

At a Game Developers Conference session, Sony has moved to dispel the myth that its Next Generation Portable could rival PS3 for processor performance.

David Coombes, a platform research manager for Sony Computer Entertainment America, explained that although the NGP is equipped with a high-performance quad-core CPU theoretically capable of 2GHz, the clock speeds will have to be dialled down in order to preserve the PSP successor's battery life and prevent it from running too hot.

"Some people in the press have said wow, this thing... could be as powerful as PS3. Well, it's not going to run at 2GHz because the battery would last five minutes," he said. "And it would probably set fire to your pants."

In his engineering-themed tour of the NGP's features, Coombes shed some extra light on the handheld's specifications and performance.

He mentioned that the game cards - the solid state physical media on which NGP games will be available in shops - would come in 2GB and 4GB sizes.

NGP games will therefore have a maximum size of 4GB. He compared this to the 9GB size of a typical PS3 game on Blu-ray, or the 10MB size of an average mobile phone game.

Coombes couldn't reveal how much memory NGP will have, but stressed that it was more than enough. "I can't talk about actual numbers, but compared to PSP we have a lot of memory... we're closer to PS3 than PSP in terms of memory size."

NGP will come in two versions: one with wi-fi, and one equipped with both wi-fi and 3G network connectivity. Coombes explained that only the wi-fi plus 3G version would also be equipped with GPS sensors. However, "wi-fi only can still do quite accurate positioning" thanks to Skyhook, a positioning service that works out your location by cross-referencing the wireless hotspots in range with a worldwide databse. "In urban areas, it's more accurate than GPS," he said.

Location-based features would include "treasure hunts" for virtual items in the real world, Coombes said, although these won't be implemented until after launch.

He revealed that NGP's front touch screen and rear touch pad could detect how hard players were pressing on them. Rather than using pressure sensors, this "analogue strength reading" would be achieved by detecting how large a surface area of the player's fingertips were pressed against the screen.

Speaking of the device's beautiful 5-inch screen, Coombes boasted that with its 960x544 resolution and anti-aliasing turned on - 4xMSAA, Digital Foundry fans - "you really can't see the pixels on the screen, which is pretty nice."

Also at the panel, Tsutomu Horikawa, a director from Sony Computer Entertainment International's software solution development department in Tokyo, performed an augmented reality demonstration in which the NGP visualised a giant dinosaur - the T-rex famous from the original PlayStation's first graphics demo - in the aisle of the lecture theatre.

He stepped down from the stage, and craned upwards with the NGP in his hands to view the dinosaur towering above him.

NGP is due to make its first apperance before the end of this year. Check out our NGP gamepage for more infor.

Picture of Oli.

About Oli Welsh

Oli is Eurogamer's acting deputy editor and reviews editor and likes to take things one word at a time. He is among the best dressed people in South London.

Read more articles from Oli by visiting the Oli Welsh archive page.

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Comments (37) Latest comment 1 year ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Sunyavadin #1 1 year ago

    Well, duh.

    Like we didn't see that.

  • Rauha #2 1 year ago

    I appreciate the honesty. Really looking forward to it!

  • Kassim #3 1 year ago

    Cant wait until E3. Hopefully we'll get all the details about games and stuff.

    The front and rear touchpads seem interesring. I can see that the back touchpad could definately substitute r2 and l2.
    The more I hear about the ngp the more I really want it! Lets just hope the price and battery life are good which are the only things im concerned about at the moment.

  • MegaCadet #4 1 year ago

    I know I'm going to be negged for saying this but I just found this too funny:

    "Speaking of the device's beautiful 5-inch screen, Coombes boasted that with its 960x544 resolution and anti-aliasing turned on - 4xMSAA, Digital Foundry fans - "you really can't see the pixels on the screen, which is pretty nice." "

    SWEET, NOW THE NGP WILL BE ABLE TO RUN ALAN WAKE.
    Edited by MegaCadet at 03/03/11 @ 00:03

  • MattEdWithCheese #5 1 year ago

    UMDs were nearly 2GB anyway but i wont buy a PSP2 unless it has upwards of 240GB hard drive with an optional expansion of some sort. I'm surprised how poor sony's support is for pro duo and non existant for the hypothetical larger memorysticks they already mentioned.

  • Geowolf #6 1 year ago

    Umm, why should the wifi only version not have GPS as well?

  • inutaihanyou #7 1 year ago

    That's just technical common sense, PR boasting is just that of course.

    But i still look forward to what the NGP can do with its much improved graphics processor, even if its not anywhere near a current-gen console. Think of playing a PS2 title with virtually no cut backs on NGP and it looks like a very real possibility. Black for instance would play great.

    Edited by inutaihanyou at 03/03/11 @ 00:17

  • BuddyChrist #8 1 year ago

    That's where your going wrong Sony: a good gaming experience SHOULD set fire to your pants

  • Timbercottage #9 1 year ago

    Wow, this certainly looks interesting. Really want to know the price now, it could sway my decision on whether to get this or the 3DS... decisions, decisions, decisions!

  • Rens11 #10 1 year ago

    That dinosaur from demo 1 brings back the memories but what about the manta ray!?

  • callum9999 #11 1 year ago

    Geowolf - Presumably because it's the "budget" model so losing the GPS saves a bit more money.

  • AaronTurner #12 1 year ago

    Does that mean the Uncharted stuff was overclocked or was that using the normal system specs?

  • Drygore #13 1 year ago

    @inutaihanyou

    Haha. PS2-game? Even the realtime stuff they've already shown blows every Ps2 game out of the water.. It's way past ps2 m8. . .

    It is ofc alot more powerful than the ps2. Have you been living under a rock the last few months? Check the announcement videos for christ sake.

  • Drygore #14 1 year ago

    @AaronTurner

    Why would they run it on overclocked hardware? Doesn't make any sense. No, don't you worry mate :-)

  • inutaihanyou #15 1 year ago

    @inutaihanyou

    "Haha. PS2-game? Even the realtime stuff they've already shown blows every Ps2 game out of the water.. It's way past ps2 m8. . .

    It is ofc alot more powerful than the ps2. Have you been living under a rock the last few months? Check the announcement videos for christ sake. "

    I'm aware of that. I'm only saying what i would LIKE to see on the NGP, which would be a ps2 game considering that its hardware could handle it. Jeeze, don't bite my head off

  • CamoChris #16 1 year ago

    "you really can't see the pixels on the screen, which is pretty nice."
    So this thing has a screen with pixels you can't really see? That's going to make it pretty hard to use.

  • cjs #17 1 year ago

    I do hope that that's a maximum games size of 4 GB only for now, and they do have some sort of path to allow larger game cards. Even though assets should be about a quarter the size of those for the PS3, I can imagine sprawling adventure games or whatever eventually wanting to use more than 4 GB.

    I also hope they just put a damn SDXC card reader on the thing for downloaded and user data storage. Limiting that to 32GB would be a pain for some, especially those in the habit of carrying a dozen movies around with them.

  • NeoTechni #18 1 year ago

    He mentioned that the game cards - the solid state physical media on which NGP games will be available in shops - would come in 2GB and 4GB sizes.

    NGP games will therefore have a maximum size of 4GB


    OUCH OUCH OUCH!

    There are PSP1 games that big!

    Quote:
    Coombes couldn't reveal how much memory NGP will have, but stressed that it was more than enough. "I can't talk about actual numbers, but compared to PSP we have a lot of memory... we're closer to PS3 than PSP in terms of memory size."


    So, does that mean between 64 and 512? That's another ouch, given the rumors were 1 GB.
    Though technically 1 GB is still closer to PS3 than PSP.

    Quote:
    Speaking of the device's beautiful 5-inch screen, Coombes boasted that with its 960x544 resolution and anti-aliasing turned on - 4xMSAA, Digital Foundry fans - "you really can't see the pixels on the screen, which is pretty nice."


    So, it'll be Sony's first AA-friendly system?

  • ATNR1 #19 1 year ago

    Yeah Neotechni, and there was PS2 games that were 9 gigs in size, yet many of current gen consoles have games between 4 and 6gigs, so I don't get what you are trying to say?


  • FireMonkey #20 1 year ago

    "Some people in the press have said wow, this thing... could be as powerful as PS3. Well, it's not going to run at 2GHz because the battery would last five minutes,"

    It's not just people from the press that said this. Rod Cousins (Codemasters CEO) said: “In portable areas you’re going to have statements, which already out in the press, saying PlayStation Portable 2 is as powerful as the PlayStation 3 – which is true".

    [link url=http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-01-24-is-psp2-as-powerful-as-ps3
    ]http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-0...[/link]

    I think it was pretty obvious to most of us that it couldn't be. Sony should have clarified the situation straight away, but I'm guessing letting people believe this is good for the sales.

  • MizzouGaming #21 1 year ago

    Im actually starting to like this thing but this poor device doesn't stand a chance.

  • dagas #22 1 year ago

    "Some people in the press have said wow, this thing... could be as powerful as PS3."

    Wasn't it SONY themselves who hinted at it being as powerful as a PS3?

  • onezeonx #23 1 year ago

    No it wasn't

  • Caimbeul #24 1 year ago

    Still keen on the device much more so than 3DS. Lets just hope they dont cock up the pricing.

  • SeesThroughAll #25 1 year ago

    NGP games will therefore have a maximum size of 4GB


    OUCH OUCH OUCH!

    There are PSP1 games that big!

    No there aren't. The limit to a PSP game size is the capacity of the UMD disc, and UMDs can fit no more than 1.8GB data.
    Edited by SeesThroughAll at 03/03/11 @ 08:47

  • SeesThroughAll #26 1 year ago

    Wasn't it SONY themselves who hinted at it being as powerful as a PS3?

    It was third party devs who said that, but the press took it out of context. Of course they meant that the games look about as good as PS3 games, taking the screen size and resolution into account.

  • aidey6 #27 1 year ago

    @NeoTechni , NGP games will therefore have a maximum size of 4GB

    OUCH OUCH OUCH!

    There are PSP1 games that big!

    UMD discs are only 1.8Gb max, I don't recall any multi disc games for the PSP

    It's nice to read realistic information about the NGP ie it will not be running at 2Giga Hz, so that'll be one less thing for Digital Foundry not to question, unless Sony can with a future firmware update find a way to up the clock speed like they did with the PSP

  • Goffee #28 1 year ago

    Roundup of all the news, links to Sony's slide deck and other news - http://psp2roundup.blogspot.com/2011/03/...

  • Gambit1977 #29 1 year ago

    Could be the worlds most expensive winter accessory when you suffer shrinkage in the cold though ;)

  • abigsmurf #30 1 year ago

    Not sure anyone really expected that. From what I've seen and heard, ~50% of the grunt of the PS3 but with all the shaders seems about right. It could however produce games that are incredibly hard to tell from PS3 ones.

  • CrumpledPaper #31 1 year ago

    It was never a question of technically being as powerful as PS3, which Coombes is referring to and rightly pulling journos up on.

    It was only ever a question in our minds how closely results might compare to PS3-grade graphics on that 5" screen. I think it's done a pretty good job so far, hearing about and seeing Wipeout, the MGS/Yakuza demos etc.

  • dhughes147 #32 1 year ago

    @Geowolf - its my understanding that when they say GPS they mean AGPS, which switches to the 3G network when in built up areas (as cheap GPS recievers are rubbish). Taking out 3G would severely limit the ability of what they could achieve for a reasonable price. Although correct me anyone if I'm wrong.

  • BonzoBanana #33 1 year ago

    Was waiting for this. NGP will probably sit in the middle between PS2 and PS3 which is a great place to be as 3DS is more PS2 so its still very powerful. Should also make the price point more competitive. If I was guessing memory I would say 128MEG main memory and 64MEG video. Ok main memory is only 2x that of psp/3ds but the video memory is 16x that of psp/3ds. If it can be clever with the cartridge and have part uncompressed and part compressed then part of the cartridge can effectively add to main memory, and the rest can be uncompressed on the fly. I trust Sony to make the cartridges very fast access.

    I can see the NGP doing complicated games like Fallout 3 with only minor compromises. There are a lot of speed advantages of cartridges over optical discs.

    I reckon this will be an awesome console but sadly still won't sell in the same numbers as 3DS I bet.

  • Kaminari #34 1 year ago

    People comparing CPUs on their respective gigahertz are idiots.

    Plus, the Cell runs at 3.2 and it's a complex octo-core architecture which has absolutely nothing to do with the much more modest NGP's Arm.

  • CrumpledPaper #35 1 year ago

    If I was guessing memory I would say 128MEG main memory and 64MEG video.

    If I was guessing, I'd do so based on that French site's leaked specs. They leaked the specs a couple of days before the NGP announcement, and they were spot on in everything they said. They said there was 512MB of main memory and 128MB of VRAM (actually 1GB of main memory in the dev kits, but it's not unusual for dev kits to have twice the main memory of final retail units).

  • BonzoBanana #36 1 year ago

    This article has stated less memory than PS3 but your pitching that it has more. The PS3 has 256meg video and 256meg main memory. I would of thought 128meg main and 64meg video was about right but of course its only a guess. I think 256meg main memory would be fantastic in a portable though and perhaps thats what we can hope for. The psp was so ambitious for its day and still offers competitive performance now I just don't think Sony are going to push the tech so much this generation. They've learned a lesson that their hardware needs to be more competitively priced. So I think they will reel in their ambitions a little bit. If they could hit £199 in the uk it would be a fantastic price point with perhaps games at £34.99 rrp. Extra revenue from downloads and other services. Arm/SGX combination shouldn't be too expensive and perhaps the quadcore arm at 1.3ghz standard speed and perhaps upto 1.6ghz full whack. Maybe a fluid speed arrangement to allow short bursts at 2ghz to improve loading times (decompressing etc) and slow down when the game is in menus etc.

    I have a fondness for the SGX it has its roots back in the powervr days with the dreamcast and I always remember how incredible the dreamcast was for its time.

  • frunk #37 1 year ago

    @Geowolf
    Umm, why should the wifi only version not have GPS as well?
    3G and GPS combined chipsets are common, therefore GPS is effectively a freebie when you add 3G. I believe it is bacause they can all use the same antenna.

    So it joins all the iDevices in that respect - iPad 3G only has GPS, etc

    @Quak
    Which means people will thin, delicate fingers will have difficulty with convincing the NGP that they're pressing hard,...
    Er probably not. pressure will be relative rather than absolute size. i.e. the pressure is how much your finger area will grow.

    However anyone with fat smudgy fingers will have difficult with teh real fine stuff... but that is life (and probably poor game design)

    [link url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DtbPOXFk00
    ]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DtbPOXFk00
    [/link]