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

I've stopped predicting things

[grungebox]

I assumed the DS would tank since most people who like handhelds already own an SP, and the DS just seemed sort of awkward and gimmicky to me. But lo and behold, it's actually selling pretty well. So I'm just going to bite my tongue and let what happens with the PSP happen. I would imagine it would not sell that well since it is high-priced and faces a market that is already heavy in Nintendo handhelds (especially since it will come after the holidays and the new DS entry)...but what do I know?

Re:I've stopped predicting things

[Anonymous Coward]

The explanation is that he's not old enough to realize that no one cares if he enjoys a kids game, or associated with it, or whatever. This realization usually hit's north american males somewhere around 25 - 35, although some people sadly never stop caring about appearing 'mature' and 'tough'.

Price Hike

[PixelSmack]

As per usual with the release of a new console we are going to see a huge price hike in the first few months... who can be that desperate to get there hands on the system they are willing to pay a few multiples of its actual value. It will come out internationally before long so we won't have to wait to long and lets face it the games shipping at lunch will not be the ones remembered on the system.

Re:Price Hike

[raventh1]

Mario64 DS will be remembered, and I still remember Halo... you know the one before Halo2 ?

Re:This suprises me.

[grungebox]

Like the Rio Carbon sells for less than the individual hard drives. Buy a large stock and the cost per unit goes down...same thing here.

Battery Life and the Such

[j.bellone]

I'm really starting to reconsider buying a PSP now with the support for MP3/MP4 playback as the previous article (there's a link on the website) suggests. Although I don't know much about Sony's Memory stick format, how much data can be held on one stick? I'm guessing there are sizes such as flash drives right?

I'm also considering buying one of these to charge the thing if it'll work properly. Will need to look into this.

I won't be buying one.

[EvilCabbage]

A format that doesn't travel well, long load times, a giagantic screen (prone to scratching in backpacks?) and short-ass battery life. This isn't aimed at the mobile gaming crowd, it's aimed at the "Gotta have the latest device" crowd. The kind of people that own mobile phones to play java games, music, light up dark alley ways but never actually make any calls on the damn things.

Nice to see other people looking at the portable market, shame Sony got it so very, very wrong.

Re:Still no indication of battery life

[Cutriss]

I think we can safely say the PSP sports graphics and games equal or greater than what the Nintendo DS offers.

Can we? Have you played all the PSP games?

Re:Proprietary format ? You mean like the Nintendo

[faust2097]

Nintendo has had patents on their cartridge form factor since the NES days, in addition to the connector arrangement, etc. That's how they were successfully able to sue Tengen for making NES-compatible games without paying license fees. Every single format we have today is proprietary, including DVD, Compact Flash, CD, everything. The only difference is who's getting your license fees.

I wish everyone would stop beating around the bush and just say "I'm not going to buy it because I can't pirate games". Given the fact that high-capacity Memory Stick Duo media is already starting to appear and will be gentler on the battery when playing video than using the UMD drive the only reason to want writable media is game piracy.

Re:Ideas to think about in the new "Portables War"

[acidrain69]

question is, is there even an adult market for these things to begin with?
I don't think so. I am a HUGE fan of games, but being an adult, I have a real job. I drive to work. Unless I took public transportation (which doesn't exist to the place I go), I don't have time for this. I have a PS2, Gamecube, Dreamcast, and various older platforms. I have a GBA (1st generation with front light installed), but I hardly EVER play it. On the rare occasions that I get to go somewhere and not drive, I have a laptop I would rather play with.

The interactivity of the DS is well known, the interactivity of the PSP not so much, why?

Because it is just a rehash of the Playstation. There is no innovation. I forsee a lot of re-releases of PSOne games, but for the most part nothing amazing.

Are audiences really going to want to buy their media on a proprietary format when a portable DVD player is so cheap these days, and works with your home disks? Saying that smaller is better was important in the 80s... I don't think that holds today.

And who is going to buy them when they can't bring them back home for the home theatre? On the ohter hand, proprietary works well for nintendo. I think the movie playing ability is going to be a flop. Maybe not in japan, because they are wierd like that.

-I am not really excited about a disk drive anything in my carry around equipment. It may be an unfounded fear these days, but still, it is there.

I wonder what the failure rate is going to be on this. The DS has the benefit of the clamshell design for protection, along with few/no moving parts (aside from the clamshell, and just inserting the games, which is pretty robust). The PSP on the other hand, has a high-performance DVD type drive internally. Coming from a company like sony, who has has problems in the past, like the 1st generation PS1's and the guide rail for the laser wearing out, also the Disc Read Errors for the PS2 (which is actually easy to fix if you know how), to the rumors of problems with the laser diodes on the new PSTwo V12 models.

After all, who uses their Xbox to play movies? Anyone? Who will use their PSP to play the ten songs that their memory stick can hold or look at digital pictures when the camera already has a screen, and shows them without running it through a PC? Picto-chat? Honestly Nintendo, if you are close enough to picto chat you are close enough to chat for real. That is more fun.

Agreed. Somewhat. Lots of people use their XBox and PS2 to play movies on. The picture function, not so useful. Picto-chat is mildly amusing, and yes, fairly useless. But I think the touch screen and dual nature of the DS will certainly open up a lot of doors for it. Nintendo has a way of creating really fun games.

I liken the PSP to the NGage. Expensive, and not as good as the cheaper competitors. Of course the NGage suffered from bad design decisions, and from what I have seen of the lineup, I am not impressed. Then again, I'm not that impressed with the DS lineup either.

Predictions: Nintendo will continue to rule the handheld market, Sony will be mildly succesful, NGage will continue to fail. Microsoft will become jealous and think of entering the market, thus losing even MORE money. I don't think Nintendo will survive as a hardware manufacturer of home consoles. I think this next system they are developing will be their Dreamcast; that is, their last chance at a home console; make or break time.

Battery life not the deciding factor at the moment

[Thedalek]

Actually, for most prospective handheld customers, battery life is not going to be the deciding factor if they're thinking "Should I get a Nintendo DS or a Sony PSP?" For most people, the deciding factor is the fact that the DS is available right now (sort of) with 400,000 more units on the way. It's already been revealed that there will be a shortage of PSP systems at launch, which isn't going to happen in America for another month or so anyway. This gives the DS a nearly 1,000,000 unit head start, with the PSP starting slow anyway.

I can say with strong certainty that the Nintendo DS will outperform the Sony PSP in terms of sales until at least 2nd Quarter 2005, when the second batch of PSPs will hit the market, and probably for a good time after that, simply because there will be more units available.