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More PSP Impressions, Loading Times Examined
ACTRAiSER writes "Lik-Sang.com once again took a close look at a new toy for gamers: the Sony PSP. The loading time for several games seems to be quite long." From the article: "Loading time and battery life seem to be the big factors which decide about the PSPs success or failure in many gamers eyes right now. While we can't comment on the battery life as of yet, latest reports from Japan about loading times on demo units that actually have access to the games are as follows..."
...we're all going to buy one anyway. :)
Only movie play back puts the PSP at an advantage over the DS in my mind, although the GBA movie player will work on the DS. Considering I alread have portable DVD player, I have no disire to buy all my movies again in a different format (Blu-Ray) and we all read the article (ha-ha) about every movie studio besides Sony pictures signing up for HD-DVD, I have no use for a PSP. Spinning optical media in a portable format has not reached a level of maturity high enough for me yet. I will pass.
The cancel button is your friend. Do not hesitate to use it.
As for load-times, I've got to see those are ridiculous. It's great being able to start playing immediately with the DS (if you have it in Auto-start). Heck, the best thing about portables is being able to play them in a bus/subway ride...those load times are just too damn long!
With all that said, the PSP does look like a sexy, sexy beast.
The main difference between load times on the PSP and load times on any disk-based console is where you are. The PS2, Xbox, GameCube, whatever is plugged into the wall, and won't run out of power at any point. You're also usually in a more comfortable environment, sitting on a couch or something. With a portable, you're on battery time (and not very much battery time in the PSP's case), and you may be standing in line, on a bus, or some other uncomfortable situation as likely as you'd be sitting on the couch.
Small size - Gameboy
More games - Gameboy
Loyalty of fans to games like mario, metriod, double dragon, Zelda, etc - Gameboy
Combine that with the better battery life, and you see that there's more to the gameboy's success than just power. The Game Gear had a lot of bells and whistles, but the gameboy had the core elements of lots of good games with solid gameplay and a long battery. Why would you trade those items for things like a TV tuner? You don't buy a portable game system to do things other than play games (look at the N-Gage).
There is more to it than this.
First rule of gaming:
More power != more fun
Back in my day, we only had 8-bit graphics. Everything was done in SPRITES. And we LOVED IT. And I had to walk to school, uphill both ways.
I certainly don't mean to sound like a troll, but there comes a point when graphics are good enough. I had loads of fun dumping quarters into Donkey Kong when I was a kid. That that had a processor speed measured in low single digits.
When it comes to 3D, if you can do a certain amount of polygons and apply textures, that is probably good enough. How much eye candy do you need? Certainly walls might look flat without bump-mapping. But you can still tell that it is a wall, and it will still protect you from the enemy on the other side. Anything more makes it LOOK better, but not PLAY better. When I buy a game, I want gameplay. Many people still consider the original Half Life to be fun to play. And the graphics engine is rather dated by now. But if it is still fun, who cares.
I know that there is a point in here somewhere. Oh, there it is. Simply throwing more hardware at a game does not make it a better game. Not that the DS has it made. If anything, the DS has too little graphics, and the PSP has too much. But somewhere in the middle is probably a happy medium that is powerful enough to show you what is going on, but simple enough not to suck batteries. I think that if you gave the DS something about as powerful as a Voodoo 2 or so, you would have a winner. Certainly that would not suck up batteries too fast using modern silicon technologies.
"-1 Troll" is the apparently the same as "-1 I disagree with you."
The system which has more and better games wins, period. I dont mind load times if I can play Final Fantasy, GTA, tekken, devil may cry or Metroid in a console.(unless they are annoying and in the middle of the game like in hl2)
...according to what Ive read you can make the battery last up to 4 times by simply lowering your brightness and using an extra light source (which is what I've done for years with my gba)
Metroid games, even the 3D ones, have very good loading times, so it doesn't quite fit in with the other examples given.
Loading times, it must be said, matter a great deal to me -- I consider FF VII unplayable to this day because of that damn wait before all those random battles. I'm still amazed I persevered through Chrono Cross. It is very possible for an excellent game to be crippled by bad load times. Although these games did very well despite the disk access, I don't think it can be questioned that they would have been even better without all those annoying, inescapable pauses in the action.
It is possibly possible that PSP developers will use tricks to mask loading times. This is what the Gamecube does with Metroid Prime, the doors between areas hide the load time. That would be good, if they could do something like that, but it's not possible in all cases.
Third. The battery is a problem YES but so it was anti aliasing for the ps2 and it still beat every other console it was against (which had better tech) Also they were eventually able to fix the problem trough programming.
Smoothing edges is much less serious of a problem for a portable than battery life.
And a lot of people agree that the GBA's pre-SP popularity came despite that unlit screen rather than because of it. I barely play my original GBA anymore because of it. If you have to turn the light down to get decent battery life then something is broken.
Anyway, are you aware the PSP runs on rechargeable batteries and AC ? all you need to do is to hook it to the car lighter, problem solved.
But a portable system is made, above all, to be PORTABLE. The PSP's system specs look like an underpowered PS2, and many of the same games are coming out for it. If you're going to be tethered to an outlet to play the thing, then it makes a lot more sense to get a PS2 instead, especially since it's cheaper, there's hundreds of games, and you can play it on a TV.
Simply stated the PSP is a console targetted at teens and young adults and weither you want to admit it or not, the DS is targeted at kids and teens. (how many "M" or even "T" titles does each console have now?)
DS: A mixture. Feel the Magic isn't for kids, and I don't think Urbz is either.
PSP: Zero, in either category. Because it ain't out yet.
The GBA was popular across the board, and there's no reason to believe the DS will not be either -- after all, it comes with a pack-in demo that offers multiplayer deathmatch, which is rather surprising of Nintendo.
My local shop is importing PSPs and they are getting sold out for xmas already.
A sold-out importer is an entirely different thing than out of stock at Wal-Mart.
Where I live the DS is making parents look at the GBA sp. Is a lot cheaper and is a nice Portable which is what little timmy wrote in his xmas list anyway. (the DS is at $200 and the GBA is $90)
No, the DS is $150, and I think the GBA SP is cheaper by now as well. Where are you getting your information?
P.S. Tekken? Is it the 90's again and someone forgot to tell me?