So at long long last, the next PSP is announced, codenamed the NGP. It was shown off at the Playstation meeting on Thursday 27th January.

Looking similar to the first PSP, the NGP has 2 analog sticks, and a front touch screen, a rear touch pad, and 2 rear small track pads. Although no games were officially announced for the system, a few tech demos were shown, showing the amazing power of the system.

For instance, there was a playable section of a new Uncharted game developed for the NGP, and from what I have seen, the graphics look very close to the original Uncharted back on the PS3, which is a real technical feat on a handheld until now!

This demo showed of the new control schemes in place in the NGP, such as motion sensing, and also the front and rear touch screens, showing them to be responsive.

The NGP packs a 5 inch OLED screen (organic light emitting diode) which does not have a backlight, meaning power is saved.

The technical specs were also released at this conference for the system, which certainly show just how powerful this machine is going to be:

Yup, inside this monster is a quad core CPU and quad core GPU, which is supposedly on par with the NEXT iPad! The clock speeds are currently unreleased, and no one is sure what the "+" means in the GPU spec, but I'm sure we shall find out all in good time.

The NGP is going to be released "holiday 2011" in "at least one region", so this brings me to think it will be released in Japan late this year and other regions March ish 2012. Regardless of the long wait, I am pretty excited about this machine, and am hoping to hear a lot more information as time goes along.

The two questions on a lot of people's minds are these:

i) how long will the battery last?

ii) how much will this set me back?

i)Sony have said they are trying to get a similar amount of hours in th NGP to that of the PSP 3000, so that will be 5-6 hours.

ii) This machine is packing a lot of up to date hardware, so it is going to be expensive. Sony have said themselves they want this to be competitively priced though, although this dosen't really help. My prediction is that the NGP will be £260 in the UK and $300 for the basic model.

So this is a wrap up for this blog, I am very excited to hear more about this machine.

What are your thoughts on it? Put a comment below! :)