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Sony Europe Boss On PSP
Thanks to GameSpot for posting an article summarizing the recent comments of Sony Europe boss Chris Deering about the newly announced PlayStation Portable (PSP). Speaking at the ELSPA Games Summit in London, Deering gave no official hints regarding hardware pricing for the PSP, but said the UMD format software "could retail for anything up to 60 euros ($71) - the majority of games would sell for between 20 and 30 euros ($24-35)" - but note that normally-priced PS2/Xbox games in Europe cost around 60 euros. Deering also mentioned that movies available for the PSP will have region encoding, much like DVDs currently do. Finally, the original news report at UK publication Indie Magazine quotes the SCEE boss as saying: "I think [PSP] can be in fact synergistic and dynamically collaborative with GameBoy" - quite a different attitude compared to Nokia.
I could be wrong but isn't the gameboy the best selling computer/console ever? The portable entertainment market is gigantic.
Maybe it is different when you drive a car but when using public transport, portable entertainment becomes extremely attrictive. I think a good 50% is reading a book, listening to music or playing with their phone. Train/bus/tram travel is boring. A good piece of entertainment means youre time spent waiting is spend well. Perhaps even better then those who get there quicker in a car.
As for the playing movies bit, didn't that a HD mp3 player maker come out with one that could play movies? (not apple or creative). This one could obviously record movies (HD) but then again sony is a content owner. They might not be ready to let people do their own drm.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
It's possible that the relatively low incomes that the working and middle classes in USA have, have lead to Minidisc players being too expensive for most people and their kids.
Portable MD players run $130-350. Portable CD/MP3 players from Sony run $90-150. None of these are what seems to be outside the reach of the middle class in the US.
Minidisc never really took off in the US because it had a poor selection of titles at launch and the hardware to record to Minidisc was too expensive initially. Plus, the format came out too soon after adoption of CDs spread. It's had a recent surge from some people looking for alternatives to CDs in car stereos, though.
No one is looking for pre-recorded minidiscs any more, though, which is a good thing since no one carries them anyway.
Region encoding is just bs, and the manufacturers of consoles would have less to complain about in terms of piracy rates if their consoles were region free. Fewer people (though admittedly probably not quite as few as some would like to believe) would be modding their consoles if they could import games and have them just work. Even the GameCube allows region switching without modding it, although it's not as simple as just putting in a game from another region, like the GBA. Unfortunately, the US is still big on region encoding, and it's still pretty hard to find a DVD player that comes region free out of the box, though it's not hard to find little 'easter eggs' that unlock region free operation for most of the current models if you look around on the internet.
-PainKilleR-[CE]