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Sony PSP Hardware Completed
An anonymous reader writes "Sony CEO Ken Kutaragi has today announced that Sony has finished work on the Playstation Portable hardware, and the handheld is scheduled to be released later this year. No details have emerged on the pricing of the PSP, but Kutaragi stated that plans for movies on the UMD - the disc format the PSP will use , are now in the final stages."
On a related topic, Sony probably won't allow anyone to put anything on these UMD discs... but I know for a fact if I'm buying a handheld gaming system, I'm not going to put more money into a movie collection so I can watch them on the go.
I think they'll find that the majority of the market would agree with me as well. But I also say that as a guy who has no children.......
Karnal
Considering the supposed sweetspot for home consoles is around $200, I can't see this getting much takeup except for early adopters until mass production brings the price down..
I still have high hopes for it as a game machine that will (eventually, with the right software) fullfill basic PDA and portable communications needs.
Seems like alot of PDA users have a machine that they want to do basic address book, note taking, etc with (things that that Palm, or even Newton) could do years and years ago, but want to be able to check their mail, do some limited webbrowsing and chatting, play games on, especially older emulated systems, and also use as a multimedia player on the go.
For games, the DS has an PDA out there licked from the start, and it has all the hardware you would need for web, email, chat, and basic PDA functions, just lacks the software. Sadly, I don't see any good way to get multimedia content onto the DS, otherwise it could really be a great all in one gadget. (The PSP tries to do that, but is going to fail due to the high cost of getting content onto it, and, for web/pda type stuff, lack of a touch screen/non-gaming type controls).
at this point, we have a $300, oversized-yet-portable game player with 3 hour battery life, and the ability to play movies on a propietary format that you can't record to... don't worry though, i'm sure you'll be able to re-pay for the movies you own, so you can watch them for a few hours on the 3" screen before the battery dies...
all we need now is some kind of phone attachment, and sony can have their very own n-gage.
The lack of a price range announcement IS a price range announcement IMO. If the PSP was going to cost $200-$250, the price would have been announced already. Do you think that a $350 price announcement would help them at all against the DS? I think that Nintendo would benefit from that kind of announcement more than Sony.
Sony is not the kind to hide good news, in fact, they'll overhype anything they have. Remember the PS2 as a supercomputer claims?. From their actions we can guess that it's going to be at least twice as expensive as the DS.
I find it very interesting how armchair analysts in the gaming industry think that it's only Nintendo who are capable of Virtual Boy-scale flops. The good ole' VB is never brought up when talking about other people's products. It's about as stupid as those who _still_ use MS-Bob as the butt of their anti-MS jokes. It's passe', and by now, totally irrelevant.
I don't see anyone doubting the PSP's success because of Betamax's defeat at the hands of VHS. (I do see people doubting the success of the PSP for many other reasons, but that's only tangential to the point I'm making.) Perhaps the Beta/VHS war occurred before the majority of today's gaming pundits were born....?
They've already announced the PSP will have a MemoryStick slot and Sony already sells video recorders that record video onto those. So you can stop hoping and start complaining about Sony's stupid proprietary formats/lock-ins, etc..
Nintendo is, and hopefully always will be, about games. They have stated this numerous times before. When the Cube first came out it was criticized for not being able to play DVDs (you could get a Panasonic Q though). This strategy is somewhat similar to the Unix/Linux philosophy about command line tools. A tool should do one thing and it do it well. Having PDA functions in a gaming device (or similarly, a DVD player in a console) is almost like having a web browser as an integral part of the OS :)
In short, I am relieved that they didn't include PDA functions in the DS. I have a PDA already and I don't want to be paying for things that I don't need. If PDA functions are made available, great, I just won't buy it.
Nintendo has stated they don't plan to develop any non-game software for it, and I am glad they have. It would be a disaster, as they seem to market to kids almost exclusively, and I don't want a Pokeman themed PDA suite. However, they have also stated that other developers should feel free to do this sort of thing. Even with that, I am still looking to the opensource/community for the best package in this games. Once some 'developer' cards become available, and some sort of development enviroment is released, this is the kind of software that homebrewers excel at. On the other hand, I don't want to wait that long, so maybe Palm wil get in on the act and release something snazzy with the Nintendo Seal of Approval.
Ideally I'd like just something basic: graphitti style handwrighting recognition, an address book, a notepad app that doubles as a universal document reader, an alarm clock/timer type program, a webbrowser, based on konqueor maybe, a simple email client, multo platform chat, or at least AOL, and a file management program to let me sync data back and forth from my PC to my DS wirelessly. A media player that streams audio and low bitrate video from a server computer would be kinda snazzy, too, but really superfalous(sp?). Some decent amount of on card flash memory, maybe 16 or 32 megs, would be plenty for what it needs to do. even 8 would probably suffice.
As it is I am hesitant to get a DS when they launch (I've got a GBA atm, and would get a DS before a PSP in almost any case). I'll either wait until it can double as a portable wireless web/email/chat device or a must have MMORPG or a price drop to $99 to get one.
Oh, as to the previous reply, the DS has integrate 802.11b so a USB syncing PDA cart would be uneeded, much better to utilize the wireless. Something like that for the GBA would be doable, but seems like the limited input capabilies and smallish screen would be a limiting factor.