Carmack Says NGP Is a 'Generation Beyond' Smartphones

donniebaseball23 writes "id co-founder and all-around programming genius John Carmack, who has become a bigger fan of the iPhone and iOS platform recently, has given his take on the technical aspects of Sony's Next Generation Portable. He says that 'the Sony NGP [will] perform about a generation beyond smart phones with comparable specs.' Essentially, the fast approaching round of iOS and Android devices will still be well behind the capabilities of Sony's new handheld, which comes close to reproducing PS3-like visuals." New details have emerged since the NGP's confirmation yesterday: there will be different versions of the device, all of which can connect over Wi-Fi, but only one of which has 3G connectivity. The battery life will be similar to the original PSP, and the NGP will have two proprietary memory card slots. Sony says they considered 3D for the device, but they don't see how it translates to portable gaming. 1up has a hands-on with the NGP, as well as video of Epic's Unreal Engine 3 tech demo.

Comments

Which means...

[bhunachchicken]

"Carmack Says NGP Is a 'Generation Beyond' Smartphones"

Which means it probably has a price to match. Sadly.

Re:Which means...

[SimonTheSoundMan]

I think the closest match to this device now would be the iPod Touch in terms of pricing the NGP. You pay more for a phone just just because it is a phone. A 32 GB iPhone 4 is £612, the iPod Touch is £254. The other components in the iPhone (IPS screen, 3G radio and camera) do not add up enough to charge the extra £358, they charge more for a phone because it what the market will pay for the product. I don't think the market would pay £600 for the NGP.

The NGP may be generations ahead of smartphones now, but the current PSP hardware was released in 2004, 7 years ago. Smartphones will catchup in 2 years or so, do not forget that the NGP is just under 1 year away from being launched so smartphones will be closing in on specs.

Sony may start the NGP selling at a loss, with costs going down through the years, finally making a profit on each sale. Who knows, it could be £250-300 at launch. PSP launched at £179, with inflation and costs of materials increasing and exchange rates, £250 is a reasonable comparison to the PSP and NGP.

Re:Which means...

[Lumpy]

Smart-phones will catch up in 6 months after it is released. Some of the things coming down the line from HTC will make it look like a outdated toy.

Re:Which means...

[Guspaz]

Unlikely. Sony essentially took current smartphone tech and scaled it up. Smartphones are starting to ship with dual-core Cortex A9 processors, Sony threw in a quad-core. Smartphones are starting to ship with single-core PowerVR SGX540s, Sony through in four of 'em.

The reason you won't see this in 6 months from smartphone vendors is because Sony has a bigger power budget; the PSP doesn't have to be as small and light as a smartphone, so they can afford to burn a lot less power. The NGP probably draws three times more power than a typical smartphone, and 6 months isn't enough time to counterbalance that.

18 months, maybe, that's enough for Moore's law to take effect, but since dual-core Cortex A9 smartphones *just* hit the market, 6 months is silly.

Re:Which means...

[GooberToo]

Not to worry - only for less than a year (if even that)

Likely a lot less. These Android hardware specs were announced several months ago for up coming models. They are clearly running in parallel time tables. By the time the NGP is available, competing hardware with equal or superior specs will already be out for Android.

Only Apple is likely to be caught behind by this, but likely only one generational cycle at worst. So in the grand scheme, this is a complete non-news story.

Re:Which means...

[Creepy]

for clarification on your post, the PowerVR SGX540 is a 4 core version, not 4 chips. PowerVR has an 8 core chip as well that can push 5x the triangles and has 4x the fill rate, but that probably consumed too much power (they may not have the power reqs of phones, but they still have reqs).

My guess is they went with PowerVR because they had the fastest GPU that wasn't only a system-on-a-chip. Snapdragon Adreno's performance numbers are pretty bad comparably (they are geared more to battery life), and nVidia Tegra is a system-on-a-chip and only dual Cortex A9 CPUs, not quad. Graphics are still pretty heavy CPU loads on modern smartphones, but as shader architectures like OpenGL 2 ES are adopted, I expect more of this work to be offloaded onto the chip.

Re:Which means...

[Svartalf]

Heh... Someone could probably already make a smartphone in that same class. Unless Sony's getting a complete exclusive on the cores on their SoC (VERY Unlikely...) someone else can spin one. If Sony's doing what I think they are, then someone else can just buy the SoC and put it in a smartphone.

A generation beyond? I respect John Carmack a lot because of his contributions to a LOT of things in the game and other industries. In this one, I'm a bit afraid he's overstated the NGP's play here.

In the past...

[Aladrin]

In the past, portable gaming systems were always WAY beyond cell phones and other mobile devices. The fact that they recently caught up must be very scary for Sony.

It must worry them even more that there are dozens of new smartphones every year, but the next PSP will be 5 years from now. That's a lot of competition.

Because that's what he just admitted... That smartphones are competition to the PSP. There's not much point in comparing them, otherwise.

Here's, let's try this: The PSP NGP is far more advanced than the space shuttle. ... Yeah, that just doesn't make sense. The PSP NGP is far inferior to a supercomputer. Yup, again, nonsense.

Re:Yeah

[lyinhart]

And the technical aspcets of the PSP were also beyond any other similar device of its generation and yet it fall behind in sales to the NDS in every market. Is not about the power of the hardware, is about the entertainment that brings the games.

If it was about the entertainment, then NDS wouldn't be doing so well either. Most of the titles are shovelware games, primarily based on TV shows and other properties. But the DS is very popular among kids. The problem with the PSP was that it tried to provide the exact same experience as a home console on a handheld, so what you ended up with were watered down home console games. At least with the DS, you have that touch screen that provides for some game features unique to that product.

lol

[Charliemopps]

"the NGP will have two proprietary memory card slots."

You'd think Sony would have learned by now.

Re:lol

[LordKronos]

Yeah, well despite all of their past media format defeats, they just won on BluRay so now they are more convinced than ever. They're like the person that's been pumping $100 worth of quarters into the slot machine all day and just got a $10 payoff...they're on a roll now. So they double down by playing 2 slot machines at once, so they can double their "winnings".

Re:lol

[RedK]

Or maybe it's their past format wins that inspired them continue. You know, things like CD, DVD, the 3 1/2" floppy, BetaCam...

It's not like Blu-ray is Sony's first media format win. But then again, everytime Sony gets one in, there's always someone that thinks it's the first time.

Re:lol

[commodore6502]

Sony tries to run their Commercial division the way they run their Professional division. In the Pro division they are constantly introducing new formats - first Umatic VCRs, then Betacam, then Betacam SP, then Video8, then Hi8, the Betacam Digital, then Betacam HD, and so on.

The pros happily gobble-up all these new formats because they can afford the huge upgrade costs, but that doesn't work for the Consumer division. You'd think Sony would finally learn but they never do. They just keep introducing one flop after another (betamax, super betamax, betamax ED, minidisc, memory cards, etc). Their only real successes were the cooperative ones like CD, DVD, and Bluray where they shared the profits with other companies.

Re:lol

[JBMcB]

CD was developed jointly with Phillips, and Phillips is generally more credited with pushing CDs as a standard (most of the actual standards documents were released by Phillips.)

DVD was also jointly developed by Phillips and Sony, but it was based mostly on a previous standard by Toshiba.

Sony came out with a 3" floppy standard that went nowhere. A consortium of companies took the standard and developed the 3.5" floppy standard.

Betacam was a good professional format widely used, just like DAT, though not adopted widely by the general public.

So, yeah, when Sony teams up with Phillips to develop new media they hit home runs. On their own - not so much (Beta, 3" Floppy, Consumer DAT, Minidisc, Memory Stick...)

Re:lol

[jo_ham]

Video8 was never a pro format! It was better than VHS-C, but barely. Both Video8 and Hi8 were much more consumer focussed, although there were some pro Hi8 cameras.

MiniDisc is also far from a flop - it is used extensively in the radio industry and in ENG applications and is still one of the best replacements for cassette tape as a re-recordable medium. It failed in the consumer space because the consumer-level decks had the stupid Serial Copy Management System that prevented you making digital copies more than one generation deep (even of your own stuff), which the pro-hardware didn't have. It also faced the rise of the mp3 player. It was also pretty successful in the UK market before mp3 came along, with several manufacturers selling portable and deck players and combined HiFi systems with MD built in. The pre-recorded market never took off - there was no benefit over CD at the time, but as a re-recordable format it was a huge hit.

what kind of generation?

[Vectormatic]

In portable gaming device land, one generation is somewhere around 5 years, which would be OK for sony, since for the entire lifespan of the thing, it will lead smartphones in terms of specs. In mobile phone land, a generation is around 1 year (you know, to get the general cattle frothing at the mouth for the new shiny for a few months before their contract is up for renewal), see apple if you need evidence, 1 apple, 1 year, 1 iphone...

Now guess what happens when sony release the NGP next holiday season, only to be overtaken by phones within a year.

Also, everyone claiming this thing is as powerfull as a PS3, can i have some of what you are smoking?

Re:what kind of generation?

[commodore6502]

>>>In mobile phone land, a generation is around 1 year

This is why I keep postponing purchase of a new phone. I know that the $200 iPhone-clone with internet capability will probably drop to $30 1.5 years from now. I'm a patient person.

>>>see apple if you need evidence

And Macs. Got a G4 that won't run the latest Safari or iTunes (good thing Opera supports old computers else I'd be browserless). I eventually sold the G4 ought of frustration. Meanwhile my XP-PC still runs everything I throw at it, even though it's a year older. "Long term support" is one advantage MS has over Apple. even though MS software is inferior.

Yep, that's Sony

[LordKronos]

Wow. TWO proprietary card slots? The game media I can understand, and even though it's proprietary I'd understand the secondary slot being Sony Memory Stick (I'd hate it, but it's sony, so I'd understand). But we're not even talking proprietary as in Sony Memory Stick, but as in an entirely new media format. Way to go, Sony.

Oh, and they don't see how 3D translates to portable gaming? Well, I'm not surprised. They didn't see how motion control translated to console video gaming either, and laughed about how useless it was for 3 years before their "hey, hey, look at me....we can do it too, and in the lamest way possible" release of Move. I wouldn't be surprised if 2 years down the line they are suddenly all over 3D portable gaming and end up implementing it on the NGP by shipping new games with a pair of red/blue glasses.

Re:Yep, that's Sony

[MikeBabcock]

You must be new here. People complain that Sony is proprietary (even though any old USB device works with my PS3 and I can even plug in standard logitech keyboards to type or Epson printers to print my photos), but don't complain about the 360's locked down ports or Nintendo's lack of anything standard.

They whine because they're anti-Sony, not because they have a good reason. We call it hating.

I've heard this song before

[commodore6502]

"The Jaguar is 64 bit! Not as powerful as the N64, but more powerful than the 32 bit Sony Playstation." - Jack Tramel, Atari

"The PS2 will be able to do Toy Story graphics in real time!" - Sony

"The PS3 will be so great, people will WANT to pay $700 to get it!" - Ken Kutaragi

Fool me once, shame on you.
Fool me twice, shame on me.
Fool me 4 times, shame on both of us.

Re:OK! OK! We get it already..

[commodore6502]

James Kirk had better writers (actual science fiction writers like Harlan Ellison).

Sony sure has screwed-up. They had the #1 console for ten years. They sold nearly 300 million units and smashed the competition (nintendo64, sega saturn, gamecube, xbox). And then threw it all away with bad ideas and an overpriced PS3. Not that PS3 is a bad console but a release price of $700 is ridiculously high.

Now it appears they are repeating the PS3 mistake with the PSP-2. They ought to learn a lesson from Nintendo - less powerful but cheap consoles == something kids can afford.

Hi, my name is John Carmack and I endorse this...

[pla]

...And in completely unrelated news, Sony has just announced that the NGP will ship with a remake of Doom (and have no other titles available at launch).

Re:Yeah

[Servaas]

DS has the biggest library of JRPG's on any platform to date... Atlas has been providing some very entertaining, quality products for the entire of the DS's lifespan. If you think the DS is for kids you are talking on hear say, not actual fact.

Re:Freedom of choice

[LordKronos]

Also, every portable console EVER has had proprietary storage - why should this one be different?

For the game media? Sure, I'll accept proprietary, But the secondary slot is for non-game data....like, say, photos taken with the camera, and other data from applications. If you are going to have those stored to built in, non-removable memory, we don't like that but we'd understand. But if you are going to be good enough to put it on removable media, then use something that's already standard. For crying out loud, we've got SD, mini SD, and micro SD. All have become standard and are used in tons of devices, we can all read them in our computer's existing card reader, and they cover a nice range of sizes for whatever size device you might want to squeeze it into. Don't want to go with SD. Well, OK, we've already got our proprietary Sony memory stick format, which come in full size and the smaller pro duo size, and our existing card readers will handle it. But even their own proprietary format isn't proprietary for them, so they've got to come out with something else brand new?

Re:carmack is an apple fanboy

[jo_ham]

Wow, so merely liking a platform that is unpopular with slashdot makes you a fanboy now? Is it possible for him to genuinely find iOS compelling for what he is doing in his line of work without him being what you are equating with some brainwashed, blind worshipper. Of all people to accuse of being "hypnotised by marketing" John Carmack is pretty low down on the list of likely candidates.

So to be an apple fanboy you need to:

* work on the platform and express that you quite like it, producing some pretty good stuff.
* ask a question that you don;t know the answer to, re: android and iOS app sales in a consumer demographic that he is interested in (people going to a con named after a game he created)
* express surprise at the answer received, one that points to him possibly reevaluating how much energy to put into porting his new engine over, given that a loose poll at QuakeCon suggests that sales on Android are as high as they are on iOS among his target demographic.

* Profit?

I'm not seeing how you can twist this into "he's an Apple Fanboy" unless you really just mean "anyone who says anything positive about iOS is a fanboy" which is probably it.

Re:OK! OK! We get it already..

[SimonTheSoundMan]

Orginal Gameboy almost sold 119 million, Gameboy Color sold 118 million, Gameboy Advanced sold 81.51 million. This is not including the other variations to the Gameboy series, like the Micro, Light, Advanced SP etc. Not forgetting Nintendo had competitors like the Sega Gamegear.

60 million of all PSPs over 7 years is shabby.

Re:Freedom of choice

[delinear]

This one should be different because, as is obvious to everyone, this is more and more going to have to compete with mobile phones. A huge selection of which allow generic SD memory use. It's just one extra inconvenience of buying this for gaming over a good phone (which, as a bonus, operates as a phone).

Did anyone read the tweet?

[GeorgeWright]

Posted here in full:

"Low level APIs will allow the Sony NGP to perform about a generation beyond smart phones with comparable specs."

Carmack isn't saying that the hardware in the NGP is a generation ahead of smart phones. He's saying that because of the APIs available to developers they'll be able to utilise that hardware more effectively (specifically that a developer will be able to squeeze an extra generation's worth of performance out of hardware with approx. the same specifications), which makes sense once you consider that the games are pretty much running on the bare metal, and that the entire system is optimised for gaming.

Does it matter anymore?

[guidryp]

I think the days are numbered for dedicated game machines when you can get Phones and tablets that will do games "good enough" for most and do much more besides.

If I stack a 7" Android tablet against the NGP. I see an open computer with plenty of free, low cost software vs a proprietary game machine with expensive proprietary apps, expensive proprietary media. I just don't think this model is really going to remain relevant anymore.

Re:Does it matter anymore?

[Lemmy Caution]

However, it is often content that sells platforms. Rightly or wrongly, game developers think of the Android market as one where people do not want to pay money for premium content: a buck or two for an addictive casual game is alright, but is anyone going to download a copy of Kingdom Hearts: Droid for $20?

Given that there still is a market for $20, $30, even $40 handheld games (though a risky one with shrinking margins), what is the best kind of platform for selling titles in that market? I'm honestly not sure.

Re:carmack is an apple fanboy

[codepunk]

I am quite sure he prefers the iphone platform for the same exact reasons I do. The bottom line is performance. If you are a game coder being able to optimize every single clock cycle is not a nice to have feature but a must. Yes I know you can do native code development on the android but it is still a bastardization at best. It is the number one reason that iOS dominates mobile phone / platform gaming.

Yeah, I have to agree with this

[default luser]

Likely a lot less. These Android hardware specs were announced several months ago for up coming models. They are clearly running in parallel time tables. By the time the NGP is available, competing hardware with equal or superior specs will already be out for Android.

Only Apple is likely to be caught behind by this, but likely only one generational cycle at worst. So in the grand scheme, this is a complete non-news story.

Thanks to the explosion of Smartphones, Nintendo and Sony no longer have the edge in performance/watt in portable gaming. Since portable platforms are constrained mostly by power, this means any performance edge they enjoyed previously is gone now.

I'm really surprised that Nintendo didn't just jump on the bandwagon and go Tegra 2 (or some other standardized platform) - it would have reduced their own development costs, and guaranteed them good platform support and upgrades. Going with that ancient PICA200 GPU and their own CPU may make for a limited gaming experience, and at $249 MSRP, they can't afford that today.

I have a feeling Sony is going to make the same mistake with the NGP, and it's really all for nothing. Fab processes are the limiting factor these days in power consumption, so you might as well leverage an already efficient design from another company.