First a Phone, Now a Tablet

Looks like Sony is widening their gadgets for gaming, a few months ago, they announced their new portable console, then a phone. And now, they are venturing to Tablets.

PlayStation Phone is Now Official

Finally the PlayStation Phone; now also called Xperia Play, will be revealed next week on February 13, 18:00 GMT. The revealing of the Xperia Play will be announce on Sony Ericsson's Facebook Page., as you can notice they have a countdown timer and a trailer for the video ad of their latest gadget.

Also Sony announced that they will release the PlayStation Suite, a online store where you can purchase PlayStation One games and play it on your Android tablets and phone. You can watch the video ad of Xperia Play below:

Behold The Next Generation Portable

The rumors are finally over, Sony has now unveiled their successor to their portable console the PlayStation Portable. Codenamed "NGP" or Next Generation Portable was announced at a press conference in Tokyo last night, it was scheduled to make its debut at the end of 2011.

Now let's take a look on the NGP's key features*:

• Multi-touch 5-inch organic light emitting display (OLED) as the front display
• Multi-touch pad on the rear of the device
• Dual analog sticks
• Two cameras (front and rear)
• Software titles on small, dedicated flash memory-based cards
• Three motion sensors, gyroscope, accelerometer and electronic compass
• Wi-Fi and 3G network connectivity
• PlayStation Network access, including ““LiveArea™”, “Near” and “Activity” log features Trophy Support
• NGP will be able to play PSP titles, minis, PS one classics, video and comics from the PlayStation Store.

And here are the technical specs* of the NGP:

CPU	ARM® Cortex™-A9 core (4 core)
GPU	SGX543MP4+
External Dimensions	Approx. 182.0 x 18.6 x 83.5mm (width x height x depth) (tentative, excludes largest projection)
Screen (Touch screen)	5 inches (16:9), 960 x 544, Approx. 16 million colors, OLED Multi touch screen (capacitive type)
Rear touch pad	Multi touch pad (capacitive type)
Cameras	Front camera, Rear camera
Sound	Built-in stereo speakers Built-in microphone
Sensors	Six-axis motion sensing system (three-axis gyroscope, three-axis accelerometer), Three-axis electronic compass
Location	Built-in GPS Wi-Fi location service support
Keys / Switches	PS button Power button Directional buttons (Up/Down/Right/Left) Action buttons (Triangle, Circle, Cross, Square) Shoulder buttons (Right/Left) Right stick, Left stick START button, SELECT button Volume buttons (+/-)
Wireless communications	Mobile network connectivity (3G) IEEE 802.11b/g/n (n = 1×1) (Wi-Fi) (Infrastructure mode/Ad-hoc mode) Bluetooth® 2.1+EDR （A2DP/AVRCP/HSP）

And these are the game lineups* that were mentioned on the press conference (titles are not final):

• Killzone
• Uncharted
• WipEout
• LittleBigPlanet
• Call of Duty
• Resistance
• Little Deviants
• Hot Shots Golf
• Reality Fighters
• Gravity Daze
• Smart As
• Broken
• Hustle Kings

*note: These were taken from the Official PlayStation Blog

You can check the videos for the demo of some games as well as some footage from the press conference (videos from Game On and Gamespot):

From the looks of it, Sony has ditched the 3D feature that Nintendo was going to offer with their 3DS, although Sony was hailed as the "Champion of 3D" for the 3D features in their home theater products, so it's surprising that they never added this feature. And with the lack of a UMD drive, the NGP is going all out for digital downloads and also promises backward compatibility, where you can play PSP, PSN, PS2 and PS1 games. Another absent from the press con was the PSP Phone, there were leaked images and videos of the said device but Sony is still mum about it.

And finally the pricing, there are still no announcement on the final pricing of the NGP, some speculate that it will be priced at around $300-350, but there's a chance that they will adjust the price to compete with the Nintendo 3DS $250 price tag.

Hopefully more questions can be answered in the following weeks and probably on E3 this coming June. So let's wait and see.

sources:

Back2Gaming

Kotaku

Engadget

The Buzz around The PlayStation Phone

It's been months that the rumors of a PSP hybrid phone is already in the works, some speculate that it was the PSP2 (the new portable console that will replace the original PlayStation Portable), some say that Sony wants to follow the success of Apple's iPhone in gaming.

Images from Engadget

And finally Engadget revealed leaked information of the rumored portable console/mobile phone, Engadget posted screenshots of the PlayStation Phone, which is still a prototype version, it was also codenamed as "Zeus". Now let's take a look on the specs of the PSPhone:

Processor: 1GHz Qualcomm MSM8655

RAM size: 512MB

ROM size: 1GB

Screen size: approx. 4 inches

The design will surely remind you of the PSP Go, which is a digital download only PSP hardware, but unfortunately became a flop due to lacking a physical drive and expensive digital downloads. Notice that the phone has a long touchpad in the middle, probably a replacement to the analog sticks and it has a touchscreen, it will also run on an Android OS. It is still unknown on how big will the internal memory is, but it is stated that it will support microSD cards.

Images from Engadget

Some say that the leaked images were fake, due to image showing A and B buttons in the menu screen (seen at the first image), but it was explained that the phone was still in the prototype stage and software was still in the early stages, hence showing A/B buttons.

Some questions are yet to be answered, whether the PlayStation Phone can play PlayStation Portable games or rather can it play PSP2 games (which is also rumored to be in development), Will this brings us PSP quality games that allows touchscreen gameplay? Will it feature dual analog sticks (as fans have prayed for this after being disappointed for the PSP having only one analog stick) When will it be released? (although it was rumored to be release in early 2011) And finally, how much will the PlayStation Phone cost?

Sony is still sticking to their policy of refusing to comment on rumors, but there is one interesting interview by CNN with Peter Ville, Vice President of marketing of Sony, that strongly proves that the PlayStation Phone does exist.

But for now, all we can do is wait for an official announcement from Sony, and this definitely proves that they want to compete against Apple toe-to-toe with their new portable console/mobile phone.

MMO Console on The Go

New upcoming portable console Nintendo 3DS will be released on February 26, 2011 and a rumored PSP2 was said to be in the works, Panasonic decided to join the portable console war.

Their new portable console called "Jungle" will feature portable MMO gameplay, now MMO gamers can now leave their homes while still continue grinding on their MMO games.

The Jungle boasts a high definition display, includes a full QWERTY keypad with touchpad-like directional and action buttons, other features includes micro USB port, mini HDMI port and 3.5mm headphone jack, it also supposed to run on a Linux Operating System. They will also launch a Battlestar Galactica game and a web show Online Underground along with the console.

So now the information about the portable console is very vague, you can check out for any updates to their official website.

Side Note: Panasonic is not entirely new to the gaming console world, their first gaming console was the 3DO on 1993.

NBA All-Star themed PSP anyone?

The NBA All-Star Weekend at Dallas has already ended, with the East wining the
all-Star game (you rock East!), the All-Star fever has still not ended

Well in this case it's more on gaming rather than sports, and NBA superstars are also into gaming, if you still don't believe me, you better see it for yourself.

Sony was at the All=Star Weekend showcasing one of it's products: the PSP Go, of course it would be out of place if it wasn't for the NBA themed designs from some of the hottest superstars today, so let's check out the gallery to see who among the superstars had their own PSP customized for them:

Lebron James

Paul Pierce

Brandon Roy

David Lee

Deron Williams

Nate Robinson

Russell Westbrooks

And then The iPad was born

Apple has just release the iPad, a tablet with a touch screen panel that promises to became one of the best gaming platform that can rival a laptop or smartphone. The announcement was made during a special event at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater in San Francisco, California.



The iPad's design is like a larger version of the iTouch and the iPhone, the screen dimension is almost the same as of a piece of paper. According to Steve Jobs, the iPad is somewhat between the iPhone and a laptop and even stating that "it is much more intimate than a laptop."

The iPad can perform tasks that of a laptop such as surfing the net, making emails and some featue of the iPhone watching movies, listening to musics, looking at pictures and even gaming (yep gaming)



Pricing:
WiFi only models:
$499 - 16GB
$599 - 32GB
$699 - 64 GB

3G models:
$629 - 16GB
$729 - 32GB
$829 - 64 GB

Specs
Height: 9.56 inches (242.8 mm)
Width: 7.47 inches (189.7 mm)
Depth: 0.5 inch (13.4 mm)
Weight: 1.5 pounds (.68 kg) Wi-Fi model; 1.6 pounds (.73 kg) Wi-Fi + 3G model

Display
9.7-inch (diagonal) LED-backlit glossy widescreen Multi-Touch display with IPS technology with 178-degree viewing angle
Touch has been reengineered for the iPad to make it "extremely precise and responsive"
1024-by-768-pixel resolution at 132 pixels per inch (ppi)
Fingerprint-resistant oleophobic coating

Capacity
16GB, 32GB, 64GB flash memory

Processor
1 Ghz Apple A4 chip

Sensors
Accelerometer
Ambient light sensor

Battery and Power
Built-in 25Whr rechargeable lithium-polymer battery
Up to 10 hours of surfing the web on Wi-Fi, watching video, or listening to music
Charging via power adapter or USB to computer system

Input and Output
Dock connector
3.5-mm stereo headphone jack
Built-in speakers
Microphone
SIM card tray (Wi-Fi + 3G model only)

Buttons and controls
On off, sleep wake switch
Mute
Volume up and down
Home button

Gaming
The iPad will run "almost all of the apps" designed for the iPhone. You can run any of them in normal size or your can expand them to fill your screen.

sources:
http://kotaku.com/5458316/the-ipad-blows-up-iphone-apps-real-good
http://kotaku.com/5458362/apples-ipad-aka-touchxl-detailed
http://kotaku.com/5453152/apple-liveblog-revenge-of-the-tablet
http://kotaku.com/5458286/apple-introduces-the-ipad