NGP Message Board

The PS Vita will officially be region-free, as tweeted by Sony Computer Entertainment's president of Worldwide Studios, Shuhei Yoshida (@yosp). Asked if it has been confirmed that Vita is region-free, Shuhei tweeted, "Yes, it is." And on the seventh day, there was confirmation.

Vita will drop on December 17 in Japan, at $390 for the 3G model or $325 for wi-fi only -- with no region locks, this means American and European buyers can order the Japanese version and have it before any of their lame, Vita-less friends. And then when those friends tell them to get a life, they can hold up their Vitas and say, "I already have one." And then they'll have no friends, especially if they tell them this joke.

Sony has announced at its Gamescom 2011 press conference details about Nihilistic's Resistance entry on the PlayStation Vita. Subtitled Burning Skies, the title (which serves as an immediate prequel to Resistance 2) casts you in the role of Tom Riley, a fireman who watches the destruction of the United States from ground zero. That task is made a lot more palatable thanks to Riley's proclivity for toting a wieldable fire axe at all times. We guess it's fortunate he decided to take his work home with him!

A brief demo showed off familiar Resistance action, with a few neat uses of the Vita's touchscreen -- for instance, some weapons' alternate fire modes are controlled with a single touch. That sounds like the kind of power we can get drunk off of.

#nextgencards Sony's already showed off the proprietary PS Vita memory cards. At the E3 gaming expo, Sony showed them off again. This time was different. More »

#watchthis Sony's sexy new hardware, the PS Vita, shows its joie de vivre in the portable's E3 reel. The PS Vita begins launching later this year. More »

#flippedaround It's no longer the NGP. Call Sony's PSP successor PS Vita. Sony released a variety of publicity photos that show the upcoming portable from a variety of angles. More »

You guys read that headline? Cause that's what we know. The illusive Ken Levine just said that there's a "pet project" that Irrational's been kicking around for a while that will live on NGP. And it's BioShock-related. That's all we know. But like, isn't that enough to pique your interest? It's enough for us. Man, when did you guys get so jaded?

A CCP spokesperson took to the stage during the Sony E3 2011 press conference to confirm that the upcoming MMO Dust 514 would be a PlayStation exclusive. Along with a release on the console, CCP and Sony will be extending the universe with a dedicated space in PlayStation Home, Move support on the PS3 and some kind of extension of the game on NGP.

Dust 514 will launch next summer (though Jack Tretton says spring of 2012). A closed beta will launch exclusively on PlayStation Network at the end of this year.

Hot Shots Golf for the NGP is everything you love about the series with some smart additions that lean heavily on the portable's special capabilities. More »

#e32011 Kotaku is at the Los Angeles Sports Arena, waiting with bated breath for the latest news from Sony on its PlayStation 3, PlayStation Network, PlayStation Move and the still to be officially named NGP. And we're holding our breath live in our liveblog below. More »

#impressions Players have created more than two million tracks on their own for popular PS3 kart racer Modnation Racers, and all of them will be playable on the NGP version of the game when it hits, Sony says. More »

#whatsinaname It won't be official until it's unveiled on stage during Sony's E3 press conference, but bookmakers are surely cutting off bets on the NGP's final name after this trademark filing turned up overnight. More »

#e32011preview Guns. Swords. Balls. The video games of E3 2011 will have all these and much more when the industry's annual conclave kicks off this week in Los Angeles. More »

#e32011preview Sick of military shooters, third-person action adventure and grinding for experience points? There's still something for you at E3 2011 in this, the best of the rest of the games we're expecting to see grab our attention next week. More »

#interview Sony's new gaming portable is priced just right, at least in the company's eyes. In fact, the NGP's price was determined before they started designing the dual-thumbstick portable. More »

At its pre-E3 event today, Konami revealed that Silent Hill 2 and 3 also would be getting the HD collection treatment, and a new entry in the series is being built for Sony's NGP handheld. More »

During its pre-E3 presentation (at approximately 22:20), Konami revealed a brand new title in the Silent Hill franchise, Silent Hill: Book of Memories. The game is slated for release on Sony's upcoming NGP (or is that PS Vita?) handheld. Series producer Tom Hulett offered few details on the game, saying only that it will be exclusive to Sony's portable and that it will be released "later on down the road" from the newly announced Silent Hill Collection.

Every half-baked fake mock-up of a mythical future PSP floating around the message boards had one thing in common – a second analog stick. Well, at least that part was right. There’s no doubt that the NGP’s dual analog sticks (a portable first!) will revolutionize first-person shooters on the go. But for my money, the NGP was tailor-made for a portable Super Stardust. Its genre *is* “twin stick shooter,” after all.

Super Stardust Delta should feel instantly familiar to anyone who’s experienced Super Stardust HD on PS3. But it’s important to note – Delta is not a port of that 2007 classic. It’s an entirely new game.

We sampled the traditional Arcade Mode, and got a feel for two new weapons, the Laser Melter and Ice Laser (names not final). Unlike SSHD’s singular, screen-clearing smart bomb, each primary weapon comes with its own secondary attack that you activate with a touch of the screen. The Laser Melter drops a black hole that sucks everything in – including your ship, if you’re not careful. The Ice Laser shoots out a huge swarm of missiles that home in on targets.

The only thing that’s really needed to make a good portable Super Stardust are two analogs (check) and a pretty display (check), Delta features an intuitively implemented use of the six axis gyros; you tilt the NGP to see what blast-able fodder is lurking just over the planet’s horizon. There’s also a devastating Shockwave attack that you activate with a quick, light shake of the device.

However, if all you wanna do is shoot like you’re used to, developer Housemarque is working on a “purist mode,” which will more closely mirror the controls in the PS3 version.

Super Stardust Delta looks awesome at this pre-alpha stage – possibly even better than Super Stardust HD. That 5” OLED screen certainly doesn’t hurt. The hardware handles the debris-filled landscape with ease, even when you start shattering asteroids into ever-smaller particles. Delta also features a vibrant color palette; this is especially obvious with the Laser Melter weapon, which pulses with an eye-searing glow.

The team promises online play (details TBD) as well as some new special play modes that make heavier use of the touch controls. But ultimately, that’s icing on the cake. This is the Super Stardust you know and love, and finally playable as it’s meant to be played on the go.

The PlayStation Portable's lack of a second analog stick has always been a problem for shooters. Sony Bend's Resistance: Retribution had a clever - albeit complicated - solution for this shortcoming: let players tether a DualShock 3 controller to the handheld. So when Sony showed off the game running in emulation on an NGP last month, with full use of that right thumb stick, we assumed there was some benefit specific to Retribution.

As it turns out, all PSP titles1 will be able to take advantage of that second analog stick, as well as other NGP enhancements. "All PSP titles that are currently available on the PSN can be played on the NGP," VP of product development at SCEA Scott Rohde told a crowd of game journalists. "And they'll take full advantage of the graphics smoothing capabilities of the system and the controls will be remapped to take advantage of the dual analog sticks."

While I can't say much about the graphics smoothing - it definitely looked like it was being zoomed up 400% - I can say that the second analog stick worked wonderfully in Retribution. The game originally mapped the right stick to the four face buttons. It's unclear how the tech will work with other games, and the representative we spoke could only say that the technology we were using was early. In fact, the sole NGP prototype that had the emulation software belonged to SCE's Shuhei Yoshida, who was taking it with him back to Japan that night.

We're hoping to learn more about how PSP games take advantage of NGP hardware at E3. Any specific questions or concerns, let us know in the comments.

1: Of course, the list of PSP games that never appeared on PlayStation Network includes several high-profile titles, like Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep, Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII, and Lumines.

#handson Packed with more than 30 minigames, Little Deviants is the perfect game to get to show off all of the features, controls and bells and whistles of the NGP. More »

As a fan of arcade racers and an evangelist for all things fast, my face melted off with a recent build of Wipeout (working title) specifically build from the ground up for NGP.

Game director Stu Tilley promises the biggest Wipeout experience to date; with 10 new tracks, 20 new ships, new game modes and weapons. My favorite feature and new to PlayStation, is cross-platform-gaming. Load up your copy of Wipeout HD Fury on your PS3 and you’ll be able to race up against seven NGP opponents in online multiplayer sessions. You can mix and match the number of PS3s and NGPs racers however you like, bringing the world of Wipeout seamlessly together with the power of PSN.

Learn more details in the video above, which also showcases how Tilley and his team took advantage of NGP’s touch technology, dual cameras and built-in Six-axis motion controls. Sure, the NGP may be the new kid in town, but it’s doing fantastic things with one of PlayStation’s legendary racers.

Until very recently, only a handful of people outside of PlayStation had ever laid their hands on an NGP unit. People would ask me what I thought about the upcoming handheld, and I’d have to reply with: “It looks really good.” I hadn’t had the chance to play it either.

That’s why we invited the cream of the gaming press crop onto a Sony Pictures soundstage in LA, where they (and we) could finally spend hours experiencing some of the titles that will comprise the NGP’s diverse launch lineup. Straight off, Shuhei Yoshida, President of Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios, made it clear what the day was all about:

“We’ll talk more about social connectivity features down the line – today is about showing off the core games and getting you hands-on time. I’m sure you have burning questions on launch date, pricing, 3G data plans, and we’ll be very happy to share all those with you moving forward.”

We first spoke with John Garvin and Chris Reese of Sony Bend Studio, who are developing the highest profile launch title, UNCHARTED: Golden Abyss. Their team was responsible for the PSP’s best shooters, Resistance Retribution and a pair of Syphon Filter titles, so I wondered what they make of the new hardware.

Then we toured around sampling the rest of the titles. Today, you’ll see posts for:

• Hot Shots Golf (working title)
• Hustle Kings
• Soundshapes
• Super Stardust Delta
• Wipeout (working title)

A note about the videos you’ll see: Every NGP you’ll see is a dev unit; they’re the right size, but they don’t possess that final PlayStation-quality fit and finish. What you’ll eventually be able to pick up in a store will look a heck of a lot better.

The titles you won’t see today, you’ll see demoed live at E3 on our stream. Look for much, much more on NGP at next week’s E3 Expo.

#ngpgameblowout Uncharted Golden Abyss is the best reason, but certainly not the only one, to buy Sony's still-codenamed Next Generation Portable. [Read our impressions] More »

It looks like Face Raiders has a challenger. More »

#namingrights Strong evidence that Sony's Next Generation Portable would actually be called PS Vita emerged earlier this week. That's still unconfirmed, but Vita is now looking more likely, thanks to a new source: Sony itself. More »

It's looking more and more likely that Sony's new handheld, currently known as the NGP, may soon receive "PS Vita" as its official name. The source code on Sony's own E3 2011 contains a handful of references to the name, including two subdirectories apparently labeled "Games and Media" and "Features." Attempts to access either subdirectory leads to "page not found" errors for the moment.

This is the second time the name has been discovered on one of Sony's own websites, having previously been spotted on the SCE developer site. Again, it's possible that Sony is simply using an internal codename for the device, though evidence to the contrary is certainly starting to add up.

#nothankyoujpg So far, Nintendo's 3DS looks to be a bust. This could change; the portable is still early in its lifecycle. But Japanese gamers aren't exactly snapping the machine up. There must be reasons for this. Turns out, there are. More »

#sony Late last week, Sony chief financial officer Masaru Kato said, "For the home equipment the PS3 still has a product life, but this is a platform business, so for the future platform—when we'll be introducing what product I cannot discuss that—but our development work is already under way, so the costs are incurred there." More »

#e3rumorwatch It's the week before E3. There are rumours buzzing around like flies on a turd. Here's the biggest fly, then, from the weekend: that the NGP has a name. And that name is "Vita". More »

Never one to be left out, Sony has finally announced its plans to stream its E3 press conference directly into the PlayStation Blog. This follows in the footsteps of Nintendo, Microsoft and, despite our strenuous pleas to reconsider, even Konami. Make sure to circle June 6th in your Sexy Sony Executive calendar (June is Jack Tretton's month!), because things get going at 5pm PT.

Though Sony has something of a reputation for its press conferences dragging on (and on and on and on), we don't think this year's conference will take up the entire five hour event. Yes, Sony's event on the 6th is five hours long and yes, if it's all press conference we'll kill ourselves too. And that is where suicide pacts come from.

Kojima Productions head honcho Hideo Kojima took to his company's official podcast to address some rumors surrounding his ongoing projects. Rather than elaborating on fans' questions (and potentially spoil Konami's long-term marketing plans), Kojima simply delivered either "Yes" or "No" answers (summed up by Andriasang).

First up: He won't be making any big splashes at next month's E3, (that's a "no"), but he did confirm that there are big plans afoot for next year's 25th anniversary of Metal Gear.

Before you get too excited, he also shot down the dream of a Metal Gear Solid 4 port to NGP, and offered another "No" when asked if MGS5 would be announced next month. As for the 3DS port of Metal Gear Solid: Snake Eater, "yes," it'll arrive by year's end.

Finally, he noted that we won't see Metal Gear Solid Rising's multiplayer anytime soon, never mind at Microsoft's E3 presser (where he will not appear). Now we're hoping that Kojima's big surprise for next year is reversing all of this year's "No" answers.

[Image source: Mega64 (screencap)]