PSP Pricing, Battery Life Announced

zmcnulty writes "The day has finally come: Over at TechJapan, we've got a translation of a Japanese BB Watch article stating that Sony has announced the Playstation Portable will cost 20,790 yen (about $195 USD) and is to be released on December 12th. Also, the battery life is quoted as being 4 to 6 hours. Not exactly what I'd call fantastic, but at this price, looks like Nintendo is in for some serious competition. Free your doubts about software too, as Sony has announced 21 titles will be released in December as well. Here's the official Japanese PDF press release regarding the PSP's release."

Comments

Battery Life

[Tom7]

Just remember that 4-6 hours really means 2-3 hours.

Re:Battery Life

[Dogers]

A more important question...
How long does it take to CHARGE?

Re:Battery Life

[Anonymous Coward]

Posting anonymously since my company is under NDA (though I'm not personally working with this device).

Sony's requirements allow spinning the disk only during level loading and not during gameplay. It seems reasonable that they will relax this if you can pull something incredible off, but expect most games to make minimal use of streaming.

I think

[MarkVVV]

I will wait until someone test this out to check real battery life.

Re:I think

[The Desert Palooka]

I agree... Nintendo seems to have a tendency to underquote the actual battery and range of things... Like the wavebird, as mentioned before, they say it has 20 ft of range, in reality it has 90ft... Also they only say something is a feature when it's in there rock solid... Basically they seem to go Worst Case, Sony, in my experience, seems to go Best Case... and then pull back the specs as they can't accomplish certain things...

I'm going with the DS. Nintendo understands the crucial points of this market... Price point, and battery life.

4-6 hours is not enough

[vasqzr]

Game Gear and Lynx both advertised '4-6 hour battery life'

They both failed. Why? They ate through batteries too fast.

The original Gameboy lasted 15-35 hours. If I took my Gameboy on a family trip, I'd get bored of it before the batteries ran out.

Re:4 - 6 hours still seems way too optimistic

[justforaday]

What are developers going to do ? Randomly decrease the screen brightness or turn off the screen for a couple seconds at a time ?

I hear the Doom3 port will be able to run for 12 hours on this thing... : p

Gamespot article with more info

[mrluisp]

Including game titles to be released in December:
Article

Price

[devmage]

Given the anounced price and the speculative pricing I guess Sony decided to take a hefty loss on the hardware. Either that or they found some really creative ways to cut costs.

Actually..

[Viewsonic]

All of Nintendos battery life times have been longer than advertised. Which is generally the opposite from everyone else.

Re:Add another one to the pile

[generic-man]

The UMD is about as open as all the other gaming formats for portable game systems out there:

• Game Boy cartridge
• Game Boy Advance cartridge
• TurboExpress HuCard
• Atari Lynx card
• Game Gear cartridge
• Sega Genesis cartridge
• NeoGeo Pocket (color) cartridge
• ...and the list goes on.

What successful portable game system has used any sort of "standard" media? The Game Park GP32 doesn't count; it's not successful, and SmartMedia hasn't been "standard" for years.