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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"
"I feel so naked!" -- PSP
If you view the photos in reverse you can see him put it back together.
I think we can safely say the PSP sports graphics and games equal or greater than what the Nintendo DS offers.
However, the deciding factor for many would-be buyers (myself included) is still the battery life, and not one article says anything about it.
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It looks like that antenna attached to the wireless chip can be removed, I wonder how long it'll be before we can wardrive with a PSP?
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?
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.
In one of those pictures, they show a Sharp brand LCD display.. its actually a medium sized display too.. how are they selling these for almost less than just the display costs(I would think anyway..)
"I tell ya, back in my day, when you linked to a picture gallery from the Slashdot homepage then you went down hard, you stayed down hard, and you damn well liked it. Nowadays, these servers just take it on the chin like it means nothing to them. That's just not proper or respectful. It reminds me of the time when..."
Seriously though, kudos to the guys at lik-sang.com for having not folded like a house of cards in a hurricane as soon as this story was posted here. I always wonder when people take apart these toys if they ever manage to put them back together in anything like working order.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
Jpeg support for quality jackage? You bet.
'Once scientists, even the dim-witted social scientists, get muzzled, the Western Civilization is finished.' - oldhack
-Sony has won the adult part of the portables market with its sleek styling and functionality... question is, is there even an adult market for these things to begin with?
-Do we need yet another proprietary media format? When can we burn on it? When can we buy it?
-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. Matter of fact, is anyone going to buy a movie on this thing? Will they be offering anything besides FF:The Spirits Within and Akira for the otaku?
-The interactivity of the DS is well known, the interactivity of the PSP not so much, why?
-It's obvious that Nintendo knows where it is going, but I am not so sure about this. Their primary point is that it is "sleek." I am not sure that being sleek is my main desire to having a portable.
-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.
From what I have seen from both Nintendo and Sony, they are trying to make a quantam leap in the portables market, and right now, my money is on Nintendo. Still, they need to do something before I buy either one. They both have side features, but shiny and features is a seriously Japanese thing, and Nintendo has held its own with their focus. So I go with 'Tendo.
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.
Some of these things on both machines make no sense. Maybe they make sense if you are Japanese. I don't know what some of these things are for.
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.
While the PSP has better hardware, the Nintendo DS has:
:)
1) Better battery life (10 hours vs 4 hours in game)
2) Game cards (Who wants to spend extra money on a memory card, and who wants to carry a bunch of disks in their pocket? I perfer to be able to save to the game media)
3) Touch screen. Without joysticks, how can you possibly play FPS on the PSP? The DS has the touch screen, which works like a mouse on Metroid Prime: Hunters (near-perfect control- I love the touch screen).
4) Cost. DS is $150, PSP is $200. Add to that the cost of the memory stick ($30 minimum) to the PSP, and the fact that an extra battery costs $50 (to equal the DS's battery life), means you get a much cheaper system with the DS.
5) Stability. That exposed screen must be very easy to damage. The flip-open DS design is a good protection. Plus, the PSP has a CD drive, you know how easy it is for those to skip with a little bump, and break with a good drop.
6) Nintendo games rule
Just my opinion. I've done some research into the topic.
the answer to that is "by taking out the battery."