PSP Opened up and Exposed

Pascal writes "After delivering some classic first impressions of the PSP last Tuesday, including some interesting loading time tests, the happy thugs at Lik Sang have now respected their tradition by opening up the PlayStation Portable. If you ever wanted to know how Sony puts such a powerful hardware inside such a small casing, there is a huge picture gallery of the guts over at Lik-Sang.com"

Comments

Re:Still no indication of battery life

[Jeff DeMaagd]

Here's one indication:

http://forums.gamespot.com/gamespot/show_message s. php?board=909100112&topic=17948788&page=0
Battery Details
What will the battery time be?
4-5 hours for Video watching through UMD.
4-6 hours average for gameplay through UMD.
4 hours with headphones and 50% volume, no WIFI and highest screen brightness (180 cd/m2).
6 hours with headphones and 50% volume, no WIFI and lowest screen brightness (80 cd/m2).

Already on ebay-

[bach37]

For a the low price of $967.18 you can buy it now!

Re:This suprises me.

[Troed]

That's a myth. It's a popular myth, but it's still a myth.

List of consoles sold at a loss: Sega Saturn, Sega Dreamcast, Xbox

Prices were reasonable before all the hype

[jardin]

On eBay, only 2 weeks ago I found a Japanese importer who had several PSP units to sell (pre-releases that would be shipped for 12/12). I guess he figured the demand would be huge and he would make big profit, so he started the bid at $0 to get attention. It turned out, most people had never even heard of PSP selling yet and thought it was a scam (many questions to the seller at the bottom of the auction included, "Are you selling a link?" "Why are you selling this 3-4 months before the release?." Or possibly people saw the retail value of $200-250 and felt if they paid more they would be getting ripped-off.

Long story short, I managed to snag me one for just over $200US (and $25US shipping to Canada, which I find is fairly reasonable). The same unit on eBay as we speak is going for $600-$700US. I guess it pays to find these things out early ;)

Even retailers, such as Lik-Sang are taking advantage of the demand by jacking up prices. They claim it is "out of their control," although Sony still claims to lose $250US on each unit (eep).

A couple weeks ago before I managed to snag the eBay auction, I had going around trying to find short pre-order lines (or finding unethical ways of cutting in line). Everyone has their price, right? After several emails back and forth from goldenshop, I found Ronald's price was $400US for the value pack. I told him I was interested, only because it may have been my only chance to get a unit before Christmas. We agreed upon $29 shipping, and things seemed to be settled. Well, that was until yesterday. I guess Ronald got quite a few of these "deals" once customers found out how limited the supply was. His "Buy-It-Now" price (so to speak), is now US$635 (followed again with the "this price is beyond our control" line). I immediately refused the offer. Only minutes later he responds back, telling me if I wait a bit, he might lower it. It sounds like a reverse-eBay method, starting high, and seeing how low he has to go before he can sell them all. Not a bad idea at all, but why not just auction them on eBay? For a slightly lower price, for around $584, you can get the Standard Pack from success-hk.

If you don't mind waiting a bit, I highly recommend play-asia. Even with all the pre-order hype, they had a very reasonable price (around retail). When they found they were accepting more orders than they could handle, they promptly closed their pre-order lines. They also had the very first review of the PSP, even though it was a bit stingy on many details.

Re:CPU ???

[adwb]

http://www.gamespot.com/all/news/news_6072659.html

MIPS R4000 32-bit core
128-bit bus
1-333MHz (1.2V)
8MB eDRAM main memory
2.6Gbps bus bandwidth
FPU, VFPU (2.6 billion flops)
3D graphics extended instructions
I Cache, D Cache

Re:I won't be buying one.

[be-fan]

The PSP is thinner and narrower than the DS, and only slightly longer. The DS is the one that's bulky.

Re:Point 3 invalid, you are blind.

[GFLPraxis]

[i] The PSP has a perfectly fine analog joystick.[/i]

I almost forgot about that. But every review I've seen says that the mini-Joystick was a nightmare to use.

Re:Why I'm getting the DS instead of the PSP:

[macshit]

I finally got a bit of hands-on time with a PSP, so I'd like to add a few more entries:

(7) The PSP is a brick. Honestly, the thing is really heavy, I felt like I'd need weight training to use it for any length of time. It feels bigger than it looks.

(8) The control scheme is kinda sucky, despite the presence of an analogue joystick. The analogue joystick seemed poorly placed (rammed way down in the lower corner), and very touchy to use. Furthermore, since the controls are clearly not directly compatible with the dual-shock anyay, my god, why on earth did they retain the same enormously crappy digital pad they've been using since the PSX, and why did they give the digital pad the "prime" location?!?!? It's not just annoying to use, it's downright painful after extended use.

The screen is definitely very nice (especially the amount of unit real-estate devoted to it -- makes the DS look almost primitive), and it's clear that Sony is really pushing the the technical envelope with the PSP, but it's also starting to seem like they forgot to include good user-design among their list of criteria for the PSP. It's pretty dissapointing to see a market-leading company with so much money -- and so much to win/lose -- making such silly mistakes.