14 DAY TRIAL // Sony Computer Entertainment of America has been revealed to have filed a new patent linked to a new touch screen technology that will probably be included in the PlayStation Portable 2 device which is widely rumored to be in development at the company and might be announced in the initial months of 2011.
The newest patent has been uncovered by the Akihabara News and talks at length about a new platform where “the visual display is disposed on a front side of the case and the touch pad is disposed on a back side of the case.”
The patent mainly talks about a “hand-held device with two-finger touch triggered selection and transformation of active elements”, with the device having two sides that can be “slidably connected to each other in a hinged configuration.”
It seems that the side of the new device which will be sensitive to touch controls can be used to detect both a “two-fingered touch” and one which is executed with just one finger.
The patent says that the new configuration, which uses two screens, will be an improvement over previous implementations where “the user's fingers often obscure the part that is to be selected making selection difficult.”
Sony has not offered any clear information on the PlayStation Portable 2 and has not commented on most rumors linked to the existence of the new device.
But video game developers have said that they have received testing versions of the new device in an effort by Sony to persuade them to create video games for it.
The PSP 2 will need to compete with the Nintendo 3DS handheld that is set to be released in Japan towards the end of February 2011, which will allow gamers to experience full three dimensional games without the use of any specialized glasses.