Need or Greed: Sony NGP (PSP2) and Xperia Play

Need or Greed is a regular column at STRGamer where we bring you the biggest stories in gaming news along with interesting topics that have gone under the radar. We figure that you're busy and don't always get a chance to scour video game news while you're supposed to be working (and neither do we, so stop trying to get us in trouble), so we'll bring you top stories that you need to know about and interesting trends that you may not have gotten your greedy hands on yet.

Need: Sony's NGP (PSP2) is announced, looks awesome

At Sony's business and strategy meeting last month, the technology megalith revealed the long awaited and highly rumored PSP2, codenamed the "Next Generation Portable" (NGP).

First things first, can we just say, OMG IT LOOKS AMAZING WTB??!?!@@!!

Engadget was the first among many sites to report on the many features of this handheld powerhouse, including a quad-core ARM Cortex A-9 processor, 5-inch OLED touchscreen display, dual analog sticks, a rear touchpad, front- and rear-facing cameras, motion controls, 3G, WiFi, GPS, and more. It'll feature a new type of proprietary media akin to flash, rather than the increasingly unpopular UMD format, and will integrate a new type of cross-media bar and store called "Live Area."

Engadget.com

Among the games demoed at the conference were first-party franchises Killzone, LittleBigPlanet, Resistance, and Uncharted, along with a cutscene from Metal Gear Solid 4, to showcase the NGP's capabilities. Sony also mentioned that the handheld will be backwards-compatible with downloadable PSP games and will support the new Playstation Suite framework, which allows games to be played on Android devices. There's also been some discussion about the possibilities of cross-platform trophies and seamless play between the PS3 and NGP (meaning that you could be playing Uncharted on your PS3, then hop on the train and keep playing on your NGP), but nothing's been confirmed yet.

No games, release dates or price were actually announced, but the system itself is scheduled to come out Holiday Season 2011 in Japan. Eurogamer also recently reported that the NGP might come out in (at least) two SKU's, with one sporting 3G and the other only having WiFi.

We have many questions about the price, launch lineup and software support, cross-platform functionality, and 3G service, but one thing is clear: it's cause for some serious nerdgasm, and if it's reasonably priced, we're totally getting it!

Greed: PlayStation Phone is real, and it's called the Xperia Play

Hot on the heels of the NGP announcement, Sony has revealed a pretty unsuccessfully-guarded secret, the PlayStation Phone. As Engadget reports, the new phone, called the Xperia Play, will support PlayStation gaming on the go.

IGN.com

The phone has a 1GHz single-core processor, Adreno 205 GPU, 512MB of RAM, 4-inch multitouch LCD screen, rear-facing camera, and will likely run on Android 2.3 Gingerbread. More importantly, it has a slide-out control pad, complete with a D-pad, touchpads, face and shoulder buttons.

IGN reports that the Xperia Play is indeed official, with the airing of its first commercial during Super Bowl XLV last week. No games have been announced yet for the phone, and the system itself has gone a bit under the radar among NGP news and 3DS hype. We're interested to see if the Xperia Play can make a name for itself in a market dominated by more traditional gaming handhelds and the iPhone and iPad.