Sony To Release PSP Handheld Console In 2004

JayBonci writes "According to News.com, in a news conference before this year's E3, Sony announced its plans to release a new gaming handheld called PSP, slated for release late next year. Presumably, this would be to compete against Nintendo's Gameboy Advance, a clear winner in the handhelds department for years now. The games come on a new media format, half the size of a CD or DVD, holding 1.8 gigs. Other Gameboy competitors such as the Neo-Geo Pocket Color have suffered from small game libraries and the inability to get over the GBC/GBA's entrenched marketshare. Despite all of this, Sony isn't SNK, and obviously has a lot of muscle to push its way to where it wants to be. It will be an interesting fight."

Comments

Battery Life

[snitty]

Ech, How long will two AA batteries run an optical drive and a color display with a backlight? My guess is about how long the Game Gear lasted on four AAs, a couple of hours.

portable format?

[ugly colour scheme]

The games come on a new media format, half the size of a CD or DVD, holding 1.8 gigs

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I sure hope their new format is solid state, because portable units are meant to be.. well.. portable. If it's a disk based format I doubt it will be nearly as durable as the cartridge based gameboy. Also battery time must be considered, if it's an optical disk the unit will not have a battery life nearly as long as the game boy advance.

I have a feeling this system might suffer the problems as some early PDA's: overpowered, too expensive, and not portable enough. Nintendo and Palm both tackled their respective markets aiming for two goals: Portability and Efficiency. I hope sony realizes this before going against the behemoth of Nintendo's Gameboy.

Re:Mud Slinging

[feepness]

George Harrison, a vice president at Nintendo of America, noted that much of the competition's success has been built on socially questionable games such as the street-crime romp "Grand Theft Auto 3." He promised Nintendo wouldn't go down that alley. "Mario will never start shooting hookers," he vowed.

Kind of reaching there huh guys? Rockstar told you to go piss up a rope didn't they? Lets face it, with games like GTA and Metal Gear as exclusive titles you guys didn't stand a chance. Zelda isn't _that_ good.

Nintendo has had that stance for, oh, 20 years now. Whether it's successful, or even reasonable, is debatable... but it's definitely NOT some new reaction to Sony. It is to a large part based on Miyamoto's attitude and design philosophy, visible from his earliest games.

Why the game boy works

[RsJtSu]

The Game Boy was so successful because it let KIDS, hince the name Game BOY, play games in the car that were not hard. The cartridges last forever, I know because I found one recently from 88 and it still works. The amount of games available is insanly high as well. The game boy did not eat batteries like the game gear and neo geo did. Also, the games on the Game Boy were unique to it. You cannot buy many of the games for the Nintendo itself like you could for the Sega version. Sure, you can play Sonic The Hedgehog on the Game Gear, but you can play the same game on the Sega console. This is why the Game Boy worked so well.........probobly alot more reasons also, but these are some that people have already posted about.

Additionally, I do not know why Sony is attempting to release an "all in one" portable machine that plays games, places calls, and serves as a PDA. That to me just seems like they are trying too hard to incorporate too many groups of people under the same device. If I want a PDA, I buy a PDA. If I want a cell phone, I buy a cell phone. I doubt there is a big market for people that want a cell phone/PDA/handheld game device. Why pay for this unless you want everything that comes with it? Just my $.02