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Sony Says PSP Battery Life is Shorter than Quoted
SetupWeasel writes "Gamesindustry.biz is reporting that "Sony Computer Entertainment boss Ken Kutaragi has admitted that graphically intensive games will drain the PSP's battery more rapidly than the quoted figures." Sony also said that this would be corrected in future revisions of the hardware, but we know how well that plan worked for Nokia."
The PSP is going to become the Game Gear or Nomad of the next generation of portables. I can't wait to scoff at them while I sit on a cross-country flight with a Nintendo and juice to spare and they sit bored out of their minds with drained PSPs 2 hours into the flight :)
so a portable with batteries that will last 2 hours. that's less than just about any air travel time. no thank you. the GBA, with its 10 hour battery life, has spoiled me.
I'm all for people being honest BUT if you think you can correct the problem in later revisions of the hardware, why not make that later revision the first release and only bring to market a product that meets the specs?
THIS ACCOUNT IS OFFICIALLY RETIRED/RETARDED.
It will become one of the most popular game consoles on earth. Why is it that Sony can make crappy console hardware, release sub-par sequels and treat their developers like garbage and still be the company on top?
The initial adopters of this platform will be available to afford extra batteries ($45 each) and therefore, the initial crowd of people buying these will not care that the battery will only give them two-three hours of time in graphically intense games. I base this on the early reports that the purchase price for one of these is going to be in the $199 range - this will make the comfortable price of entry for portable Playstation goodness at $300 once a game and extra battery is purchased. Having said this, I certainly hope that Sony is not looking to replace Nintendo at the top of the handheld game machine pile - I can't see a great deal of average parents giving little Johnny or Belinda a $250 toy that wouldn't survive a drop to the floor!!! I'd guess that Apple has more to worry about than the Mario Bros.
I forsee people hauling around massive external battery packs to play this thing. Honestly just get a DS and show Sony you wont put up with bullshit like this.
If you really feel that you need over 2 hours of playing time, you should go buy a home console for that purpose. I feel that the battery life is within reason and a decent trade off for the graphical capabilites of the PSP. It still beats my laptop.
Guess that just means I wait for that revision, I'm sorry Sony, but batteries need to last for the trip to work, and then the trip back from work (or school for you youngins..). Guess I'll stick with an Ereader or something or a Palm Z31 and read PDF's instead, I'll learn more :)
BC
For everything they offer in the psp the battery life is sufficient for release. Yes the DS will have about 5x longer playtime... for now. If Nintendo made something with the same size screen/processing power then they would run into the same problem as would any company.
The 1 up that sony has is they have been making portable disc devices for quite some time now, and the battery life for most is nothing short of amazing (32 hrs off of 2xAA for cds.. not to mention the insane life MD players offer). There is obviously more to it than just cd player life. There is no doubt in my mind the sony engineers will come through in due time.
Eventhough their first revision of the psp wont last the longest, sony will live up to its name and manipulate the hardware to provide sufficient battery life for their product.
I have a Dell Insperon 600m (One of the few with 64megs of onboard video ram) and I have the same power issue.
With my extra battery pack, in place of the CD drive, I truly get a solid 5 hours of battery time. AS LONG AS I play games that don't use 3D. (ie Mame emulation, dosbox, 2d puzzle games.)
However, the second I bring up Dawn of War, Anarchy Online (using the built in wireless), or Prince of Persia, the battery life goes to crap. I am lucky to get an two hours, even with both batteries. (Yes, I have valid copies, and use the CD hack)
They won't "fix" the problem. It can't be. People will just get used to the idea that they can only play non-multiplayer;2D games on their PSP on trips and 3D games with the plug in adaptor.
I think that if the battery life is a major issue, the PSP faithful will simple buy more extra battery packs. I think they will initially sell for around $45, so it's like the memory card when the PS2 first came out. Consider how many people bought one of those in the early days of the PS2. Eventually, Sony dropped the price. Supply and demand.
Yet, an extra battery pack is more of nuisance that a memory card. It requires periodic recharge and forces the user to remember to keep a battery charged or charging at all times. But in the end the market may drive down the price of extra battery packs and this battery life issue may be resolved through non techical means.
Go Gusties
Sony has a reputation of not being straight with developers. If you believe Sony's numbers (or don't look at them too hardly), the PS2 is four times superior to the gamecube. Sony's marketing seems more in touch with their consumers. They know how closely these things are compared and publish specs with the consumer in mind, rather than the developer. So when Sony says 4 hours of portable ps2 power, every game developer friend I know did a little Sony math to figure out the REAL number. Given that 4 hours was already a wanting number, the psp will naturally come up shorter.
I'm not sure I want Nintendo to come up and engage in the same detrimental practices telling me their stuff can move 8 times more polygons than it ever will in a commercial game, or reinforcing gender stereotypes in gaming. Making Zelda cel-shaded turned off many consumers, but it beats selling GTA and MGS to preteens.
I Browse at +4 Flamebait
Open Source Sysadmin
I'm sure that 3rd party spare batteries will be popular early on, just as add-on lights were popular with early GameBoy Advances. If Sony sells a spare battery for $45, the 3rd parties will probably sell for $15; I'd be the first to pick up a couple for trips.
Repeat after me: Pong is not a stress test. Pong is not a stress test.
"Wow. Now THAT'S a lot of angry Indians." - Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer
My favorite thing about the GBA SP is that it lasts longer than any flight I've had to take for work. I'm sure if I took a nonstop to australia, I could run it down-- but I'd probably need to sleep before I cashed the battery. It lasts long enough that even if you're not at a save point, you can just turn off the backlight and leave it running for most of a day until you finally arrive somewhere with an outlet you can use.
Somehow, I don't think your suggestion of a home console is likely to do me much good on an 8-hour flight.
You begin to wonder if they are ignoring this news on purpose, because not ign, gamespy nor gamespot have mentioned this news.
Probably Sony wouldn't treat them well if they were proclaming the new truth about the system, even if revealed by Kutaragi himself.
At least, for one time Kutaragi is being honest about hardware (or maybe, the battery life is even worse than he says)
I just want to add to the record that in comparison, the GameBoy SP life is so long, that my daughter got her SP in July, and we recharged it for the very first time today (November 3rd).
Yeah, she wasn't playing it every day, but she played it often enough, and then there were a couple months where it sat unused. Other devices like my Palm Clie and Dell Axim (PocketPC) will still lose battery powered even when left unused.
Gotta hand it to Nintendo engineers.
Why in gods name do you nintendo fanboys not see this? Whoever wants a PSP WILL BUY A PSP. Whoever wants a DS will buy a DS. I claim neither is better - only that in the near future market, Nintendo was concerned enough with the plans of the PSP that they felt they needed to step up the dev schedule of the new machine.
Physics is nothing like religion. If it was, we'd have an easier time trying to raise money!
As I said to my friend in class today: "LET'S STROM THE BLACK GAooooooo...."
He said the 4 to 6 hours was an AVERAGE of multiple games. An AVERAGE, you hear me? You can't predict an exact time
I can't believe some of the comments I am hearing here.
"early adopters can afford extra batteries"
"the battery life is sufficient"
"simply buy extra battery packs"
Dang, people. You're living in denial. I said similair things back when I thought the Jaguar would be Atari's second coming.
"Just wait for the next game!"
"There are over 250 developers making games right now!"
"Club Drive is gonna be AWESOME!"
Yeah, you might eventually get a better battery life. Someday. Just don't hold your breath like I did - it's real embarassing when you pass out.
BTW, how many people remember the big horkin' D-cell power pack for the Lynx? Woohoo! 10 hours of full color backlit gaming goodness, on just $25 worth of batteries!
Must... think up... something... clever!
I await the slashdot article pointing that out, or the expulsion of what biased fanboy posted this one
How it seems to be shaping up: The DS' drawback is graphics power, and the PSP's drawback is battery life. This is absurdly reductionist, both systems have unique features (with the DS looking towards PDAs for theirs, and the PSP looking towards portable DVD players), but I think this is how most gamers will see it.
I, and probably a good many people, will buy a DS regardless of what Sony does. But I really think Nintendo should consider cutting the price a little more in response to Sony's highly aggressive $200 point.
The DS is probably priced to make Nintendo a profit on units sold, while the PSP is *definitely* being sold at a tremendous loss. A further reduction to around $120 would make it a lot more attractive to parents, some of whom may still be smarting from a recent purchase of a GBA SP, and would be unlikely to be followed-up by Sony.
Well, contrary to your hope, actually gamespot and ign covered the same interview:
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gamespot
Finally, Kutaragi touched on the PSP's rechargeable battery, which is purported to last between four to six hours--on average--for games, and up to four to five hours for movies.
"The battery consumption changes depending on the memory and processor usage, aside from disk access," he said. "It'll run for a long time when playing puzzle games but shorter when playing Ridge Racer, for example. Using the wireless LAN also affects the battery consumption [...] I think that there's still some room left for power-consumption improvement through software."
IGN
Continuing on the topic of battery, he offers: "By extending the amount of battery volume, we were able to create something with very good specifications. However, based on memory and processor use, the amount of power use changes. A puzzle game will offer lengthy time, but Ridge Racer will perhaps offer less than that. Using wireless LAN will have a great effect on how long the battery lasts. However, by making adjustments on the programming side of things, we would like to make it so that for whatever game you play, the announced value is an average." This seems to suggest that SCE is telling developers to hold back on pushing the system to its limits in the interest of maintaining the battery time promise.
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Most likely thing is, GI.biz had (intentionally?) mistranslated the interview and had decided to give another negative campaign for PSP, even after its battery figures are revealed, to lure more viewers to their web site to rake more Google AdSense advertisement revenue.
It's a match made in fanboy heaven. Anybody who wants to see this is going to have to get the PSP. Perhaps swapping out the battery in the middle of the movie lets you see the ending where Aeris is resurrected!
In real estate the 3 most important things are "location, location, location".
In handheld gaming consoles, it's battery life, battery life, battery life.
More news at 11...