Sony NGP not powerful enough to set fire to your pants

Sony NGP, not quite a Power Ranger
Sony NGP, not quite a Power Ranger

A Sony rep has confirmed that its company's handheld, the Sony NGP, won't be as powerful as the PS3 when it is launched.

David Coombes, platform research manager at Sony Computer Entertainment America, said to developers and engineers this week that contrary to media reports, the NGP won't match its console stablemate specs wise, because if it did then it may well burst into flames.

"Some people in the press have said 'Wow, this thing could be as powerful as a PS3'," Coombes explained.

"Well, it's not going to run at 2GHz because the battery would last five minutes... and it would probably set fire to your pants."

NGP: No Great Power

While Coombes was probably joking about the 'setting fire to your pants' bit, we would have thought Sony would have had the 'f' word banned after its major battery recall of 2008.

For those who are sad and now a little depressed that the NGP won't have the power of the PS3 – don't fret as the handheld's RAM will be closer to the PS3 and games will be stored on either 2GB or 4GB cards.

Coombes also hinted that the head-tracking, face detection and augmented reality features that the NGP will have will be more for gameplay and not video.

Via Kotaku and Gizmodo

Marc Chacksfield

Marc Chacksfield is the Editor In Chief, Shortlist.com at DC Thomson. He started out life as a movie writer for numerous (now defunct) magazines and soon found himself online - editing a gaggle of gadget sites, including TechRadar, Digital Camera World and Tom's Guide UK. At Shortlist you'll find him mostly writing about movies and tech, so no change there then.