Yoshida: Third-party feedback "essential" for final NGP design
Sony took a "back to basics" approach for PSP successor
Sony's Worldwide Studios boss Shuhei Yoshida has said that feedback from third-party developers has been essential to the final design of its next handheld console, codenamed the NGP.
Speaking to the official PlayStation blog, Yoshida claimed the NGP has been in development for over three years before it was officially revealed earlier this year, with Sony taking a back to basics approach to development of the hardware.
"The NGP development team visited many developers and publishers globally with an early prototype of the hardware to get direct feedback," he said.
"I also personally joined some of the meetings to discuss various aspects of NGP and the options we were looking at. The input of other developers outside of Worldwide Studios has been essential for us to make final decisions on NGP.
"As a result of this, we went through many iterations of NGP. It reminded me of the early days of the original PlayStation, when we visited many developers and publishers to get feedback during the development of that product. It's almost as if SCE has gone back to basics, which should be a good thing," he added.
Last week Sony revealed that retail Gamecards for the NGP will come in 2GB and 4GB sizes. Yoshida said he expects a wide variety of games for the system, from traditional console games to augmented reality, touch-only titles and network-enabled games.