Sony CTO Reassures PSP Fans

Thanks to GamesIndustry.biz for its article regarding new PSP news, including statements by Sony CTO Masa Chatani that "our plan to sell the PSP within the year is secure". He also revealed some new features of the PSP, such as a "home page" type screen, while being quite quiet on the battery issue. Commentators still seem to find it unlikely that the PSP will be out before 2005.

Comments

Battery life and homepage

[Lord_Dweomer]

Am I the only one who gets really sick of turning on my PS2 with a game in it and I have to go through the whole damn PS2 menu just to play the game?

Some games just go right to the game when this disc is in and the unit is on, but many don't.

Frankly, with the PSP, if battery life is an issue, and I can't see why it wouldn't be, I don't want to waste time/battery life going to a damn homepage. I want to play a game. This isn't a handheld computer, this is a portable gaming device, don't add steps that make me wait longer to play the damn game.

Re:Screw battery life...

[MBCook]

I agree. I want one, but if they price it above $250 they are shooting themselves in the foot and will be another Sega Nomad (those were expensive at first as I remember) or like the NeoGeo Pocket (don't remember the true name, but it premiered at like $500, IIRC).

Their target audience may be "older and more sophisticated" with more discresionary income, but if they try anything over $250 they're dead.

And I hope they do good with battery life (I trust they will). I'm not expecting the 20 hours a GBA can deliver, but they don't want to be the next GameGear (man did those things eat batteries!). But since the battery is internal and can't be swapped out (according to everything I've seen), when it's dead, it's dead (can't put new ones in like you could with the GameGear); so that's even worse.

Re:Screw battery life...

[drinkypoo]

The neo geo handheld was the Neo Geo Pocket Color, or NGPC. The original handheld to price itself into irrelevancy was the NEC Turbo Express. I don't even remember the Nomad when it was new, I never saw one at all until much later when I got one as part of a trade or something. (I've since let it go; the battery life was abysmal.)

I'm sure the PSP's battery will be at least as replacable as the iPod's :) I know the power consumption of the PSP is probably at least an order of magnitude higher than iPod's, and that wasn't your concern anyway, but I couldn't resist.

Game Gear was a mobile device not designed for low power that used COTS alkaline batteries. The PSP is going to use a far more advanced battery, and it will be something custom-made for the PSP. I'm sure its battery life will be nowhere near as good as the GBA for example, but it's dramatically more machine, too.