After the tragic events of the Japanese earthquake and subsequent tsunami Sony are coming to terms with the fact that this may have well a knock-on effect on its highly anticipation Next Generation Portable.
While there was never a concrete release schedule for the NGP, the president of Sony has conceded that they will struggle to get the handheld out in all territories by the end of the year.
Sony Computer Entertainment of America president Jack Tretton told Bloomberg that the Sony NGP may arrive in just one region this year rather than Asia, Europe and the US simultaneously. The issue is the result of disruption to several component factories following the March 11 Japanese earthquake and tsunami.
He said: “It may be the straw that says maybe we get to just one market by the end of the year.”
Tretton did try and turn any possible delay into a positive and stressed the positive aspects of a delay for the NGP, suggesting that developers in the later regions will have a lot more time to prepare their launch games – which we have agree with.
Financial analysts have also put the boot in too, stating that any delay would allow Nintendo to take a sizeable lead with their recently released Nintendo 3DS .
“As it is now, it’s already going to be almost 8 months behind Nintendo, and a delay could push that to a year,” Wedbush Securities analyst Edward Woo tells Bloomberg in the same report.
Sony isn’t the only company facing production problems in Japan, where several factories have been shut down, Apple is also grappling with the issue in the face of strong demand for its iPad 2 tablet – which is pretty much sold out nation wide.
The NGP was unveiled in January by Sony, improved massively upon the current PSP design adding two analogue sticks and a 5-inch OLED touchscreen with 960×544-pixel resolution.
There is also a touch-sensitive trackpad on the rear of the device, as well as front and rear-facing cameras, 3G and Wi-Fi connectivity, and games coming on memory cards rather than UMDs.
Developers have praised the NGP’s potential recently. “Low level APIs will allow the Sony NGP to perform about a generation beyond smart phones with comparable specs,” said Doom and Quake creator John Carmack.
We think every right-minded individual will be able to come to terms with waiting a little bit longer to get their hands on the next-gen portable - the events in Japan and massive loss of life makes any delay seem insignificant. After all it's only a games console.
Our heart goes out to all Japanese people effected by the tragic events of March 11th.