Well it took half a bottle of Pepsi and some chocolate chip cookies (I made earlier) to keep me up for Sony’s PlayStation Event in Tokyo (it was at 1 am EST) but I did it and what an event it was! A lot of speculation had been made over the last several days about whether or not the “not-so-best” kept secret PlayStation Phone & PSP 2 would be announced today. While Sony didn’t formally announce the PlayStation Phone (or rather the Experia Play as it’s rumored to be called) they did however introduce the PlayStation Portable’s successor. Not being named ‘PSP 2’ as of yet, the ‘Next Generation Portable’ (NGP) was at the forefront of today’s announcements.

There was A LOT of stuff revealed about the NGP but I know your OCD wants the details in quick bite-sized pieces so let me feed these bullet points to you:

• Similar in design to the original PSP oval design but will sport a 5″ inch OLED screen with 960 x 544 resolution (16:9)
• Capacitive type Multi-touch front screen AND rear panel
• Front AND rear facing cameras
• Built in stereo speakers and microphone, and well as a headphones jack
• It will use six-axis motion sensing and a three-axis electronic compass
• Built in GPS, Wi-Fi (infrastructure & ad-hoc) , it will work over 3G (no service providers listed yet), Bluetooth 2.1
• It will use dedicated flash memory-based cards for games
• Standard buttons/controls include the PS button, Select/Start buttons, traditional D-Pad & PlayStation Buttons, single left & right triggers, power button, volume buttons, and last but not least DUAL ANALOG STICKS!!!!!!

I’ll say that again….DUAL. ANALOG. STICKS.

This thing is a beefy machine and is everything that PlayStation Portable gamers have been hoping for and more! Apparently the system CPU will not only play PSOne, Minis, and PSP games but it can play games that run on PS3. This was evidenced by a live demo of Uncharted that utilized not only the traditional button/stick controls but the touch screen as well, like I said a dream come true! There was also a new User Interface featured on the NGP that appears to replace the XMB, which looks iPhone/Android-like. The only way I can foresee Sony screwing up this new hardware launch is with price point and Sony has a history of launching their gaming systems with less than ideal price points. The NGP is expected to launch around the coming holiday season with more details to come in the following months.