10 reasons you won’t buy Sony’s NGP

Cor, Sony’s NGP looks like a beaut, doesn’t it? Quad-core processor, 5-inch touchscreen, three accelerometers. I’d stroke THAT rear touch panel.

Yes, it’s the hot new hardware that’s got gamers, developers, and journalists in a flutter, and has flabbered our collective gast with incredible graphics and complete console-like control layout.

But will you be buying one come Christmas 2011? In case you haven’t made up your mind, we’ll make the decision far easier with ten good reasons to ditch the NGP.

I’m no expert in the hardware manufacturing process, but I’ve done some cursory sums and there’s no way to run a quad-core processor on a 5-inch touchscreen for longer than 18 seconds. Not without resorting to a detachable battery pack the size of Istanbul, or harnessing alien energy secrets currently kept at Area 51.

It used to be an industry of incredible stamina. You could complete The Legend of Zelda twice on a single Duracell. Nowadays, an iPod touch will be running on empty after the average train journey, and the 3DS won’t get you half way through an episode of My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding. At this rate, the NGP will die before Killzone’s title screen.

With Nintendo’s worldwide price tags out in the open, Sony had the opportunity to return fire. If the company could comfortably undercut Nintendo’s console, it would have.

But it can’t, so it didn’t. And because Sony didn't announce a price, we can estimate that the actual console will cost somewhere in the region of 17 billion pounds. Sony says less than $600, but anything over £200 goes from impulse purchase to serious consideration. We’ll have to wait and see, but it doesn’t look promising.

In a history of unique and exciting features on consoles - stereoscopic 3D graphics, touchscreens, accelerometers, online play, and a secret version of Snail Maze - a rear touch panel doesn’t exactly set the world on fire.

Okay, so it can be used to pinch a 3D object, alter the landscape from below and make Nathan Drake shimmy up a vine, but it’s hardly Xbox Live, is it?

Essentially, in a war against eye-popping, glasses-free 3D visuals, Sony’s armed with a touch-sensitive bum.

We already know that 3DS games will cost more than DS games. And it’s safe to assume that NGP games will be the same price, if not even higher. The console has graphics on par with early PS3 games, which are no small investment. To make sure developers see a return, new games will be priced high.

If an NGP title is the same cost as a brand new Xbox 360 or PS3 blockbuster, it will certainly make choosing a new game tricky. Especially in comparison to 59p apps on a certain smartphone.

Having a PlayStation 3 experience on a 5-inch screen sounds like heaven. If you live in a shoebox, that is.

Personally, I play a lot of my handheld games in my house. When I’m out and about, I’m looking for fast, time-wasting games to play between tube stops - a need perfectly satisfied by my iPod touch. So more often than not, I’m playing my PSP and DS inside.

Which is fine for completely original games like Ghost Trick and LocoRoco, but playing a pint-size Uncharted while sat next to a 40-inch plasma and a copy of Uncharted 3, might seem a little bonkers.

Like any self-confessed video game addict, I own both a PSP and a DS. In fact, I have two of each, because I fancied the slimmer models and never bothered to flog my old hardware on eBay.

But with handheld console prices rocketing in price, and the dire state of game journalist wages, the idea of getting both a 3DS and an NGP makes my wallet cry.

So, naturally, I’m probably going to have to choose. I can have a pared down version of my PlayStation 3, or a completely new console that has Mario jumping out of the BLOODY SCREEN like some sick magic.

I love the PSP, and the idea of Uncharted in my pocket makes my boy parts tingle, but if I can only afford one, it’s the 3DS. I’m sorry, Drake.

When the PSP came out, the idea of having a portable device that played videos and browsed the web was like some mental dream of the future - an unbelievable vision of a new world where you’d convert TV shows into MP4 files and awkwardly fit websites onto a letterbox display when in wi-fi range.

Now, it’s Earth Date 2011 AD. Everything from my iPod touch to my toaster can browse the web, and we all live in hermetically sealed bio-chambers. It’s brilliant. But it does make the NGP’s multimedia prospects slightly less tantalising, and the planet’s air makes your skin fall off.

So while the PSP was sold as a games console that can play videos and browse the web, the NGP will just be a games console. No bad thing, but it makes for a harder sell.

The NGP is a big, beefy monster of a portable. It's larger than any other handheld console on the market, and actually dwarfs some European cities. This thing is, with no minced words, massive. It doesn’t need a slip case, it needs a suitcase. Am I getting this point across? The console is huge.

This isn’t the '90s, and I'm not MC ruddy Hammer: we don’t wear baggy trousers or parachute pants. We wear normal trousers or, in some extreme cases, vein-choking, leg-chafing drainpipe jeans. You can barely fit a credit card in those things, let alone a games console.

It might sound like a trivial nit-pick, but if I’m going to have to take a bag just to carry my games console around, it had better be the best games console ever.

Sony recently held a private event for NGP developers. It showed off some games, laid out some key dates, and dropped a giant news-nugget: the publisher expects to put all launch titles for the console on the PlayStation Store, and make them available to PlayStation 3 owners.

Well, news flash Sony. I already have a PS3. Two, in fact (we’ve discussed this). If I can get the exact same games, sans-touchscreens, on my HDTV, and without shelling out for an expensive gadget, why bother with the NGP?

The PSP’s releases slowed to a trickle in a few years. Rampant piracy turned off many developers. Sony constantly bombarded gamers with firmware updates. Many games were adaptations and ports from PS2 software. My analogue nub came off and fell down a crack in the pavement.

I adore the PSP, but history is not on Sony’s side. The technology leviathan has a lot of ground to make up, a lot of broken hearts to repair, and a lot of sceptics to win over.

It’s not impossible, and the developer certainly has the cajones to pull it off, but it will take some serious mettle to trust the firm in round two.