NGP: In which I Grasp at Straws

[Shiva Indis]

So, have you been following the news? The successor to the PSP has officially been announced, and everyone is now calling it by its codename, NGP. Whee! GungHo Online Entertainment, Inc. is on the list of developers supporting the new system. And Gungho -> Game Arts -> Lunar!

....Okay, that's a stretch. But I was glad to see Gungho on the list anyway.

[Dragonmaster Lou]

So, have you been following the news? The successor to the PSP has officially been announced, and everyone is now calling it by its codename, NGP. Whee! GungHo Online Entertainment, Inc. is on the list of developers supporting the new system. And Gungho -> Game Arts -> Lunar!

....Okay, that's a stretch. But I was glad to see Gungho on the list anyway.

Here's hoping it will be a little while before it comes out (if it comes out) for the NGP. I just got a PSP for SSH...

[Kizyr]

I don't like the move to try to make everything download-based.

It usually means shutting people out of the import market (or forcing them to choose Japan-only versus US-only), the loss of all your games if your PSP gets stolen, and the lack of anything collectible to keep in your closet and replay over the next decade. Then again, no games that have come out this way have been the kind where I think I even want to replay it ten years on down the line. KF

[Shiva Indis]

Sony's backing away from D/L only a little. There will be physical media, but they're ditching UMD in favor of flash memory cards. You won't hear me complain about not dealing with those things anymore. It suggests that we'll only be able to take advantage of the NGP's backwards compatibility with downloaded games, however, and that ain't cool.

[localflick]

This article also said that the cards will also have room for DLC, which I kind of like, but that also means that they are limited to how much DLC there is from the start. If something turns out to be really successful and there's a lot of DLC, or if there's something like an FPS with fan-made maps the card might not hold it all, and it may need to be stored on the system.

I'm not entirely sure how that could work, but I do invite this next generation of handhelds which will most likely allow me to play yet another version of Lunar Silver Star, and in the case of the 3DS, possibly play it in 3D.

Can we get just one port of Eternal Blue?! Seriously, I love the first Lunar, but show EB some love.