Sony has unveiled details of a new PlayStation Portable that it hopes will take a share of the mobile gaming market from Apple’s iPhone, iPod touch and iPad.
The new PSP gets a new name — NGP — and a list of new features that will sound very familiar to iOS device users: motion sensor, location awareness, touch controls — though only in certain areas on the front and back, 3G and Wi-Fi.
Where it will differ, range of games apart, is with its larger screen, a five-inch OLED that Sony says provides four-times better image quality than the current PSP.
Sony did not reveal when the NGP will go on sale, nor how much it will cost.
In a more surprising move, Sony revealed that the PSP/NGP will no longer be the only way of playing PSP games. The company is planning to introduce PlayStation Suite software for tablet devices and mobile phones, which will debut this year for devices running Google’s Android OS.
PlayStation Portable sales fell by more than a third last year to about 2.7 million in April–September; during the same period Apple said it was activating 230,000 iOS devices each day.
