Slashdot Mirror
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..."
So what are "chirurgical gloves" and are those Ipod earphones? Heck, muggers are going to be using those as a beacon of who to pick for years to come at this rate!
24 seconds to from power off to Title/Menu for a game seems a little extreme. The DS seems to gimmicky for me and the PSP seems like the system can't handle all the graphics powers making the games less enjoyable because you have crappy load time and battery life. I think I'll keep waiting for another portable system to come out (I'm looking in your direction Microsoft) **shutters**
-Dipster
...we're all going to buy one anyway. :)
"The Lik Sang crew actually wore chirurgical (sic) gloves during the whole process of testing the unit and while performing the photo session."
I've said it before, and I'll say it again.
Touching is bad.
with the prices of flash memory falling, maybe a future solution sony could implement is by creating a disk cache on the memory stick? then again these ARE first generation psp games, and much like first generation ps1 games, the load times will improve with better programming.
Better graphics: Game Gea (by far)
Backlight: Game Gear
Color Graphics: Game Gear
TV Tuner option: Game Gear
Battery Life: Gameboy (by FAR)
Overall Winner: Gameboy
(hint, hint, Sony...)
From power off to Namco logo and title: 16 seconds
From selecting car/track to start the race: 14 seconds
Exit the game back to car/track selection: 10 seconds
Dokodemo Issho:
From power off to PSP logo and title: 20 seconds
Starting game from title screen: 10 seconds
Going back to title screen: 5 seconds
Mojipittan:
From power off to title screen: 20 seconds
No more waiting time
Minna no Golf:
From power off to PSP logo and title: 24 seconds
From character selection to start: 19 seconds
Waiting between courses: few seconds only
That doesnt seem very long, hell DS has 5-7 second load times from poweroff to opening logo then title, and how much better are PSP's graphics? You should've expected some load time.
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.
Why can't any of the places comment on battery life yet? Gamespot said they can't either, and that it would come later. I don't see any reason for them not to mention it unless Sony told them they couldn't if they wanted to have the PSP early.
I can't help but feel that there's something to hide if that's the case.
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.
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?
Actually, the Gizmondo portable console may be Microsoft's low risk (for them) answer to the portable gaming market. It was recently announced that they will be developing games for this console. Gizmondo is built around a powerful 400MHz ARM9 CPU and runs a version of Windows CE.
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started