Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
"the NGP will have two proprietary memory card slots."
You'd think Sony would have learned by now.
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.
George Wright