Friday, January 28, 2011

Podcast Review - Podcast Beyond!: PSP2, NGP, and You (ep. 172)

Lots of little subjects this week about one big subject; the recently revealed NGP from Sony.

Hear the podcast here.
(right-click to save)

This weeks topics:
Colin's new name
How Greg Miller hates physical copies of games
How Scott Lowe things the touch panel has potential
Price (guesses at $400, and $300)
Scott says "Wii is a piece of crap."
LiveArea
The looks of the NGP
3G for free?
Non portable portable?
Colin continues to say "you know?" a lot
How do the graphics compare to the PS3?
PlayStation Suite
PlayStation Phone
Sony has leakage issues
PSPorting; a bad thing?
Trophies!!!!11!! (their reaction)
Do we need to redefine what a portable game is?
Scott says the NGP is attacking the iPhone more than the 3DS
Spec talk
Heavy rain movie moving right along
Joe Baca in the house (white)
PlayStation Pick of the Week: Dead Space 2 (even though everyone is playing it on PC)

Questions:
Backwards compatibility with PSP
Will the NGP name stick?
What happened to the slider design that was rumored?
Colin says "I hope they bring back the boomerang controller" (he didn't sound like he was joking)
Will we get to start a game on our PS3, move it to NGP, work on it there on the go, and transfer it back?
OLED in the sun
Colin says "We should be optimistic [about the NGP] because we were pessimistic about the PSP"

Opposite to the last Nintendo Voice Chat for the 3DS, the Beyond! crew is all positive about the NGP. Any why not? We haven't gotten those same details that seem to have turned a few people off of the 3DS. The only thing the crew is universally concerned about is the price (and I think Greg and Scott are being overly optimistic about that). It feels like the podcast crew has completely flip-flopped about what they want out of portable games where they now think having a full console like experience is something worth investing in and carrying around a handheld for, but honestly I could be confusing their position on the matter with another crew (they share many members, though).

Apparently Scott (or was it Greg) re-questioned his source about the slider design for the NGP, and it seems that the dev-kits have a slider design and everyone is surprised by the long design. They've had a running idea for awhile about how you might just quickly transfer your progress in a PS3 game over to your PSP 2 and continue playing since the graphical capabilities are supposed to be so similar, and since it wasn't mentioned in the conference, a listener asks about it and the crew waxes poetic about their idea somemore. I think it's an interesting idea, but why not just stick to one version? I really doubt any developer is going to pack both an NGP and PS3 version into the retail PS3 release without kicking up the price to some extent, and I question if that extra cost would be worth it to anyone over just buying an NGP version and playing that at home and on the go? 

You might notice that quote from Colin Moriarty right at the end there. First he tells people that are complaining about things about the NGP that they are just looking for things to complain about and that they should shut (I'm sure there was a signature "you know?" in there somewhere), then says "We should be optimistic because we were pessimistic about the PSP?" First thing's first; it's pretty universally remembered that PSP was the industries hands-down favorite to succeed versus the DS, so no Colin, the collective "we" were not pessimistic about the PSP. Second thing's second; why would that be a reason to need to be optimistic? Apparently we need to shut up if we think we have concerns about the NGP. Dunno how that guy got promoted, you know?

Love to hear NGP talk, so this gets a high recommendation despite a few sour grapes.
5/5

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