The PSP2—or the NGP, as its currently codenamed—may be powerful enough to play PlayStation 3-quality games. At today's coming out party for the next-generation PlayStation Portable, Sony and friends showed just that.
Sony's Shuhei Yoshida likened the power of the next PSP to that of its current home console, the four-year-old PS3. A handful of developers took the stage to illustrate the next-generation PlayStation Portable's power, playing an all-new Uncharted game designed for the new handheld, as well as a few games based on existing PlayStation 3 software.
Metal Gear creator Hideo Kojima showed a demonstration of Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots running on the PSP2, looking almost as good as its console counterpart. "This game used the model data and environments from PS3, and it was exported directly to NGP," Kojima said, adding "On NGP, we can enjoy the same quality as the PS3."
Sega's Toshihiro Nagoshi also showed off a PSP2 version of Yakuza 4, extolling the ease of reusing PlayStation 3 assets, saying the Yakuza team created its NGP demo in a very short time frame.
Capcom's Jun Takeuchi showed two games running on the PSP2, a copy of Monster Hunter Portable 3rd to illustrate the system's backwards compatibility with downloadable PSP games and a demo version of Lost Planet, which looked close to its PlayStation 3 ancestor.
None of those titles were officially announced as PSP2 games, however. Given the ease of portability between the PS3 and PSP2, we won't be surprised if some of those PlayStation 3 games find their way to Sony's new platform.