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.

Comments

Region lockout?

[Frac]

Deering went on to say that although there'll be no difference between the PSP consoles sold in PAL and NTSC territories, there will be regional encoding for movies, similar to that used on DVDs.

Great. Will there be regional encoding for games too?

Not a games machine...

[Dot.Com.CEO]

I see the psp as the next generation of minidisc, a technology that, unfortunately, few people are aware of. I have been a minidisc user for years and I believe that with the netmd sony got it right. Excellent sound quality (compared with mp3s, at least), lightweight, and acceptable drm. The psp will be the minidisc of the video age. It will have music, video and games, all in a convenient package. I don't understand why the editors of /. (simoniker might be the only exception) and most other "online journalists" fail to see both the psp and the psx for what they are: multi-faceted hardware that does well in a variety of tasks. I don't care about the gaming capabilities of the psp myself, but I can't wait to have an acceptably good, truly portable format for movies. And do not doubt that Sony will permit recording of movies on those disks - maybe non-css encoded only (home movies, for example), but it is trivial to de-css a movie and mount the iso as a virtual disk in all modern OSs.

The only thing I think is stupid is the region encoding. That rules out sales of movies at airports for long flights, but I guess that a way will be found to overcome this limitation.

Re:Is there a market?

[SmallFurryCreature]

mmm, is there a market.

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.