Carmack Says NGP Is a 'Generation Beyond' Smartphones 190
donniebaseball23 writes "id co-founder and all-around programming genius John Carmack, who has become a bigger fan of the iPhone and iOS platform recently, has given his take on the technical aspects of Sony's Next Generation Portable. He says that 'the Sony NGP [will] perform about a generation beyond smart phones with comparable specs.' Essentially, the fast approaching round of iOS and Android devices will still be well behind the capabilities of Sony's new handheld, which comes close to reproducing PS3-like visuals."
New details have emerged since the NGP's confirmation yesterday: there will be different versions of the device, all of which can connect over Wi-Fi, but only one of which has 3G connectivity. The battery life will be similar to the original PSP, and the NGP will have two proprietary memory card slots. Sony says they considered 3D for the device, but they don't see how it translates to portable gaming. 1up has a hands-on with the NGP, as well as video of Epic's Unreal Engine 3 tech demo.
Yep, that's Sony (Score:4, Interesting)
Wow. TWO proprietary card slots? The game media I can understand, and even though it's proprietary I'd understand the secondary slot being Sony Memory Stick (I'd hate it, but it's sony, so I'd understand). But we're not even talking proprietary as in Sony Memory Stick, but as in an entirely new media format. Way to go, Sony.
Oh, and they don't see how 3D translates to portable gaming? Well, I'm not surprised. They didn't see how motion control translated to console video gaming either, and laughed about how useless it was for 3 years before their "hey, hey, look at me....we can do it too, and in the lamest way possible" release of Move. I wouldn't be surprised if 2 years down the line they are suddenly all over 3D portable gaming and end up implementing it on the NGP by shipping new games with a pair of red/blue glasses.
Re:carmack is an apple fanboy (Score:4, Interesting)
Wow, so merely liking a platform that is unpopular with slashdot makes you a fanboy now? Is it possible for him to genuinely find iOS compelling for what he is doing in his line of work without him being what you are equating with some brainwashed, blind worshipper. Of all people to accuse of being "hypnotised by marketing" John Carmack is pretty low down on the list of likely candidates.
So to be an apple fanboy you need to:
* work on the platform and express that you quite like it, producing some pretty good stuff.
* ask a question that you don;t know the answer to, re: android and iOS app sales in a consumer demographic that he is interested in (people going to a con named after a game he created)
* express surprise at the answer received, one that points to him possibly reevaluating how much energy to put into porting his new engine over, given that a loose poll at QuakeCon suggests that sales on Android are as high as they are on iOS among his target demographic.
* Profit?
I'm not seeing how you can twist this into "he's an Apple Fanboy" unless you really just mean "anyone who says anything positive about iOS is a fanboy" which is probably it.
Re:Which means... (Score:4, Interesting)
Smart-phones will catch up in 6 months after it is released. Some of the things coming down the line from HTC will make it look like a outdated toy.
Re:carmack is an apple fanboy (Score:4, Interesting)
I am quite sure he prefers the iphone platform for the same exact reasons I do. The bottom line is performance. If you are a game coder being able to optimize every single clock cycle is not a nice to have feature but a must. Yes I know you can do native code development on the android but it is still a bastardization at best. It is the number one reason that iOS dominates mobile phone / platform gaming.