Evolution's Pleased As Punch With The Next Generation Portable

Speaking about Sony's approach designing the hardware, director Matt Southern said developers were given a massive influence on the design, even as far as the system's rear track-pad feature.

“We’ve all been looking at odd-looking devices with wires sticking out them since an early date, because with the commencement of research on NGP, Sony really changed its approach so that it was much more developer-driven,” said Southern.

“Instead of Sony handing hardware to developers and saying, ‘here’s our next device, make something cool’, it set about asking developers what they thought should go into the device, and what they thought would be cool.

“Literally saying, ‘we’re thinking of a rear touch pad, what could you do with that?’ BigBig came up with Little Deviants, which I think is going to be one of the killer apps,” said Southern. “So it’s almost kind of weird to be asked what I think of it because I told Sony what I think of it and, as a result, that’s reflected in the hardware.

“That’s happened right across, Japan, Asia, Europe and America, so in terms of first-party development it’s the machine we all wanted, and I think that’s starting to show in the games. It’s going to be a tremendous console for gamers, whether they’re core or hardcore.”

We're not sure what "core or hardcore" is, but it's hard not to be excited by Southern's excitement for the system. We've been hearing similar sentiments from all over the developer community regarding NGP, and it really does sound like Sony's got the hardware nailed from creator's perspective. The developers are the first hurdle after all, if they like the hardware they're working on, it gives them room to be creative.