Industry analysts and John Carmack weigh-in on Sony’s NGP

By Stephany Nunneley

With the announcement for NGP from Sony this morning, three industry analysts have weighed-in on the news: Mike Hickey of Janco Partners, Lazard Capital Markets’ Colin Sebastian, and Wedbush Morgan’s Michael Pachter. So did John Carmack, technical director at id Software.

Here’s comment from the three analysts, courtesy of Industry Gamers:

Mike Hickey

• “We are expecting a +$250 price point for Sony’s NGP. We’re naturally excited over the muscular hardware specs including: two analog sticks, 3G connection, touch screen, OLED display and developer support. However, we suspect Sony’s NGP will face considerable market competition from smartphones, tablets and Nintendo’s 3D’s gaming handheld. We believe Sony’s PSP and PSP Go failed to resonate with today’s mobile gamers; and view the NGP as an evolution not a revolution from the aforementioned. The mobile gaming market moved aggressively away from Sony’s interpretation of a mobile game experience, and it’s not clear to us that the NGP is mapping to that new market.”

Colin Sebastian

• “[NGP has a] strong software lineup, but unlikely to hit the mass market. At launch, Sony expects to have a strong lineup of games for NGP, including Activision’s Call of Duty as well as Sony first-party titles, including Killzone, Uncharted, and LittleBigPlanet. While clearly differentiated from the more casual games that have made the iPhone a phenomenal success as a video game platform, it remains unclear whether there is mass market potential for high-end portable games. We note that Sony’s PSP did not meet initial sales expectations despite offering the highest quality graphics on a portable device at that time. Over time, we expect the NGP and PS3 to offer concurrent game-play in the ‘cloud’.”

Michael Pachter

• “It’s a pretty impressive device, the screen is relatively expensive, and the features set suggests to me that we’ll see something in the $249/€249/£199 range (those pesky VAT countries!). There is a lot to like, and Sony has a huge library of content. The device looks pretty powerful, so I wouldn’t be surprised to see some pretty sophisticated games, and the 3G capability and relationship with Android means we’ll see a ton of Android apps on the device as well. I suppose it will sell incredibly well for the first year (would bet 15 million or so), and then it will succeed or slow based upon the availability of software, much like the original PSP. I think it’s a huge step up on the PSP, and think that the memory card-based games (a la DS) make a lot of sense.”

id Software’s John Carmack took time away from tweeting about rockets to comment on the next PSP, and stated over Twitter that: “Low level APIs will allow the Sony NGP to perform about a generation beyond smart phones with comparable specs.”

You can get caught up on everything PSP2 related through our gorgeous round up post.