SONY EVENT ROUNDUP; NEXT-GEN PSP, PLAYSTATION SUITE

Sony held an event today to launch their new PSP (codenamed NGP) and the Playstation Suite.

The NGP is the successor to the popular PSP handheld gaming device. It has a quad-core Cortex-A9 and a quad-core Imagination Technologies PowerVR SGX543MP4+ GPU doing the grunt work within. Front and rear cameras and a multi-touch capacitive screen are also included. Bluetooth, 3G and wireless b/g/n are baked in as well. Games will come on "new media," not UMD anymore, but we're unclear on what sort of flash memory is being used. Sony's rather proud of the fact it's offering the world's first dual analog stick combo on a portable device, though we're more geeked about the quadrupling of pixel count from the original PSP.

Playstation Suite is a cross-platform software framework. What this means is Sony will have a whole Playstation Store filled with Sony games available for the Android tablets and phones. According to Sony the Playstation Suite will be "hardware neutral" and make games portable for "all kinds of handsets".

NINTENDO 3DS LAUNCHING IN MARCH IN US

The highly anticipated Nintendo 3DS system will launch February 26 in Japan, followed very closely in the U.S. in March.  The 3DS comes bundled with a charger stand, AC adapter, a 10cm (~4") Nintendo 3DS touch pen, 2GB SD card, six augmented reality cards and instruction manual.

New functions, according to Nintendo, include a slide pad, a motion sensor and gyrosensor.  Like its predecessors, the 3DS will have parental controls. It is backwards compatible with games from the DS system.  The top screen is a 3.53 inch liquid crystal display running at 800 x 240 while the bottom button screen is 3.02 inch liquid crystal display running at 320 x 240.  It has two cameras on the outside at 0.3 megapixels each and one camera on the inside.  WiFi functionality is built in as well.

On the outside there is a game cartridge slot, an SD card slot, an AC adapter slot and a headphone jack.  Stereo speakers are on the left and right of the upper shell.  The Nintendo 3DS will be powered by rechargeable lithium ion batteries. [Gizmodo]