Slashdot Mirror
Prelude to the PSP Launch
Josh writes "Because the Japanese Launch is quickly coming upon us, we at PsiNext decided to put together an editorial which talks about the important events in getting to the final product release for the PSP. It is a good chance for those who are just getting into the PSP to catch up on what has been happening for the past 18 months." From the article: "The dream of a portable gaming unit began many years ago for Sony, around the time Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE) was preparing to release the PS2 to the world. Work began in 1998 under the codename "E.T." and it was to be Sony's first stab at the portable gaming market to try and take down the then industry leading Nintendo with their GameBoy."
Can you say "utterly worthless article"? This goes into only moderate detail on the good points and COMPLETELY skips the bad points! (battery life, anyone?)
This is HARDLY the kind of article that should be reccomended to someone who hasn't heard of the PSP-- this is fanboy press, pure and simple.
Does the PSP have the ability to phone home?
Or perhaps the engineers' have low expectations for its success, like a previous E.T. in the videogame industry?
The programmer who did admitted that he was heavily drugged/medicated at the time of development for it. No wonder half of that game was spend following down unforseen ditches. The guy was so high he probably spend countless hours laughing at himself everytime he fell.
-Dipster
Does anybody know if this super storage disc format will be housed in some type of protective cartridge? I hope they don't look like Gamecube discs, because portable stuff should be built for durability on the road.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
Personally I can't belive this
all their consoles have been MIPS based even the PSP
Methinks that IBM is the FAB...
IBM rock at this very few other fabs have SOI and 90nm working as nice and they are looking at 60nm and 45nm real hard apperntly
has somone got arch specs and not just the normal Cell patents ?
regards
John Jones
Sony will begin to produce over 700,000 units a month, with a year 2005 ending total of 10 million PSPs worldwide. Those are numbers that Nintendo has never faced before and could spell the downfall of a once great portable gaming empire at the hands of the PSP.
I like this part. Nintendo has never faced large numbers before? Wow, what about the PS2? And the GBA's install base is far larger than what the PSP will have in produced units at the end of 2005...
Nobody wants to hear it but this HAS to be a paid slashdot post.
Most media (specially print magazines) is really just outsourced PR. It was really only a matter of time before Slash did the same.
And about two weeks ago they started working on the batteries...
That will surely bring good memories to the old gamers! It will bring a lot of luck!
--
Wiki de Ciencia Ficcion y Fantasia
If you'd read the article, youd've found out that the Sony ET was the doomed non-SCE handheld that another bit of Sony tried to make a couple of years ago, not the PSP. But it really was a rather bad name to pick for a games project, at least if you're superstitious. If only theyd've picked another codename, we could've had the over PSP three years ago.;-)
And the DS isn't universally loved, I'm in the universe, and I think it sounds a bit gimmicky (and also looks a bit unwieldy). I'd stick to my GBA. The PSP sounds like a cooler gadget, apart from the battery / display issue. (I'm in the UK, not expecting either until Easter at the earliest).
10 PRINT "LOOK AROUND YOU ";
20 GOTO 10
Anyone else realise that today is the 10th anniversary of the launch of the Playstation?
Computer and video games have a small article here . It'll be interesting to see how they compete with the DS as the last ten years have shown they are rather good at this. Personally speaking i wouldn't touch the PSP, the screen is begging for a good scratching and i seem to recall battery life (and size) where what killed the sega game gear. I still love Sonic 2 though.
"all through my house i set up traps, it seems like the rats have a map, so now i feed the rats crack" - Donald D
I'm sure developers are looking forward to breaking even if the PSP takes off. Seriously though, if you're gonna launch a portable, launch a portable. Don't try risk adverse techniques; they screw early adopters and the market share. Every PSP that could have been sold but wasn't is a loss, a customer that every game developer just missed a chance on. If I were a developer, I'd be either pissed or sceptical, depending on how committed my own company was to the PSP.
UMD is relatively small, somewhat smaller than a gamecube disc. But I don't think its a brilliant move; I know that they're pushing the format as a portable, low-power media but nothing reads it, and given Sony's style, nobody but Sony ever will. I mean, do you plan on purchasing any movies released on the UMD format?
I Browse at +4 Flamebait
Open Source Sysadmin
the light year is not a unit of time. it's the DISTANCE light can travel in a year in a vacuum.
Wikipedia on "lightyear"
You can get a DS off ebay.co.uk, no problem, and pretty cheap what with current exchange rates. Unfortunately, there's only one good game for it at the moment, I'm going to wait until I can get Wario Ware at least...
The DS may lookunwieldy to you, but that may be because you've possibly only ever seen it in use by stylus users.
In reality, games that use the stylus alone are very easy to control, while keeping the unit easy to hold. Other games that require use of the buttons are often best played with the thumbstrap, which has to be felt to be appreciated. Just remember that the DS will be able to play all the same types of games that may become available for the PSP, with pretty much the same control schemes. It's really the PSP that lacks the touch screen option, which, when implemented properly, is very intuitive. As a DS owner, Feel the Magic and the Metroid Prime Hunters demo have convinced me of that.
What add-ons to the DS do you fear third-parties will try to avoid using?
The launch titles _all_ make good use of the DS' exclusive capabilities (assuming that's what you mean by "add-ons"). If you took any of the DS launch titles and tried to do them on the PSP.....you would be _removing_ features to do so. Due to the PSP's limitations, this fact simply will not change during the lifespan of both devices.
the then industry leading Nintendo
How about try 'The then, now, and forever more industry leading Nintendo'
I already know i'm going to hell, now i'm just trying to get cable down there.
I really don't see the PSP succeeding beyond the realm of the tech savvy young adult who needs everything, and the curious spoiled child. Portable gaming is a completely different world.
I think its a terrible tragedy that Nintendo has the console with the pointing device - Nintendo wouldn't know what to do with a pointing device if it was shoved up their ass, meanwhile Sony would have bought out Blizzard already by now if they had a good console for Diablo and StarCraft (which have been shitty on consoles up until now due to the lack of pointing devices).
DS will be the better console, have an extensive library of utterly fascinating and innovative games that get boring after five minutes, and about 4 games worth playing long term. The PSP will have fourty thousand games, but a signal-to-noise ratio of 5%, and none of their games will be better than those top 4 Nintendo games - but they'll have an endless library of "pretty good" games to play the hell out of.
In short - PSP = better games, DS = better console. Yeah, I'm calling it now.
I wonder, how is it that the PSP stays cool? It seems like it is very similar to the PS2, so wouldn't it require some kind of active cooling or at least a good passive system? To me it looks like there is no way for heat to escape the unit.
SIGFAULT
...that the DS has sold 500K+ in the USA and shipped 500K in Japan?
The DS could very well surpass 1 million units sold by this time next week.
It cannot be denied that Sony is the behemoth of the gaming world, but why is it ignored that Sony hardware is plagued with bugs. Defective drives, compatibility issues, less than rugged design. These are issues that were common to the PS2 and will probably be multiplied on the PSP. The thing looks too delicate, and I agree that screen is beggin' for a scratch. Also, if that thing get dropped, look out screen and disc drive. While sony does lead the industry in anti-skip technology, we all know that it eventually wears out. I bought my game boy in 1989, it still works. I seriously doubt the same will hold true for a PSP in 2019.
"I think its a terrible tragedy that Nintendo has the console with the pointing device - Nintendo wouldn't know what to do with a pointing device if it was shoved up their ass, meanwhile Sony would have bought out Blizzard already by now if they had a good console for Diablo and StarCraft (which have been shitty on consoles up until now due to the lack of pointing devices)."
Spoken like a magazine-grade pundit! Of course, that's not saying much, given the "Tiger Beat" state of games journalism. Or perhaps it's saying a lot.
Anyhow, I think it's funny that you say that Nintendo, whose existing touch-screen control implementations in the form of the minigames in Super Mario 64 DS are brilliant, and who have had the good judgment to have Namco and Sega doing cool games for it (the upcoming Pac-Man game and the launch game Feel the Magic spring immediately to mind), have no clue what to do with the input device that they themselves implemented. You then go ahead to point out that Sony, by your understanding, would know better than to make such cool games available and would instead bring PC ports to portable gaming, resulting in a better portable product in your opinion. All this, based on what? Clie? Vaio laptop trackpads? What?
"DS will be the better console, have an extensive library of utterly fascinating and innovative games that get boring after five minutes, and about 4 games worth playing long term. The PSP will have fourty thousand games, but a signal-to-noise ratio of 5%, and none of their games will be better than those top 4 Nintendo games - but they'll have an endless library of "pretty good" games to play the hell out of."
You mistake Nintendo for Sega. It's Sega that does the highly-conceptual, heady games with limited appeal. (They often appeal to me, but that's beside the point.) Nintendo does "everyman" games, and very well at that. Those best-of-class Nintendo games you mention are often simple games, done to perfection. After all, what is the Zelda series at its core but a third-person hack & slash with RPG, platformer, and puzzle components to it? That puts it in the same genre as Landstalker, Soul Blazer, Alundra, and any number of 3D games. And yet....it's the game series plenty of console gamers would consider as the perfect game of its type. The others I specify, while all very good, don't really even come close.
The PSP will have good third-party support, but, oh, what's this? The Nintendo DS third-party developer list is longer? Several key devs have announced DS games under current production but haven't even publically claimed PSP support at all yet? Not to be too cheeky, but both points kinda throw a wrench in the argument that the PSP is more lucrative in the development comparison.
Sorry, here is the article I meant to link in my last comment.
If everything goes as planned, and the PSP has a successful launch, Sony will begin to produce over 700,000 units a month, with a year 2005 ending total of 10 million PSPs worldwide
Ok! Lets do a little bit of math here
10 million psp units...
each costs $200...
Cost to produce rumored to be twice as much as cost to produce...
10,000,000 * 200(1) = $2,000,000,000
(1) (twice $200 = $400; $400 - $200 = $200; $200 = net loss per psp)
Im not a marketing genius, but losing two BILLION dollars for a product (not even including shipping costs to distributors, nor does this include the marketing costs that must be associated with the psp) is not chump change. Sony is putting a lot of trust in their psp, and I find it very risky espically when they have a history of underperforming and putting a lot of hype into their products.
Id rather have 10 extremely innovative games that I will never get tired of than have 923810293 versions of Vroom Vroom Racing/Random XYZ RPG/Beat 'em Up Fighting Game.
I think its a terrible tragedy that Nintendo has the console with the pointing device - Nintendo wouldn't know what to do with a pointing device if it was shoved up their ass,
On the contrary, Nintendo is the company poised to do a pointing interface best. Because they have no ties to the computer gaming world, they're not as bound to the bland point-and-click paradigm.
Besides... Metroid: First Hunt has what amounts to mouselook. That's cool. Then there's the new WarioWare in which all the games are stylus based, the Yoshi game where you draw platforms for the characters to walk across, and games that use the stylus for analog control (which strikes me as a bit half-assed, but it is a cool idea).
meanwhile Sony would have bought out Blizzard already by now if they had a good console for Diablo and StarCraft (which have been shitty on consoles up until now due to the lack of pointing devices).
If Sony bought Blizzard it would probably be the beginning the end for them. In the long run, it's extremely difficult for an owned studio to remain fresh and creative, due to pressures from On High. Nintendo's among the least bad in this regard, but even they recently drove away the creator of Kirby.
I find it highly unlikely, in any case, that the PSP will have the better games, for the same reason that the PS2 doesn't, generally, have better games than the Gamecube. Sony's game strengths lie almost entire in Square (there are a good number who will buy Sony no matter what, so far as they have a lock on console Final Fantasy) and volume (release enough games from enough different people, and some of them are bound to be good).
Nintendo, Former 5x Heavyweight Champion of the Portable Gaming world, squares against Sony, in the most technologicaly advanced fight of the Millenia.
Who when will win the heart of portable gamers around the world? Who will claim the covent title of champion in this no holds battle of buttons and screens?
LETS GET READY TO...PLAY!!!!!
But I can't WAIT to get a PSP so I can play Mahjongg Fight Club! It's going to be the best game ever!
Whats the battery life on these anyways? These things must take a lot of juice from batteries. It would probably be a wise idea to invest in some good alkaline batteries and not skimp out with those cheap heavy duty ones is what I'm thinking. Anyone know for sure?