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Sony PSP Launched With Long Queues In Akihabara
Juergen writes "At 7 a.m. JST, the first shops in Tokyo's 'Electric City' Akihabara opened their doors and sold the brand-new Sony PSP to the long queues of gamers (Mirror) who had waited already for more than 24 hours in a chilly 5 degrees Celsius."
So when did this happen? I remember back in the good old days when we called them long lines...
Waiting in line for 24 hours almost certainly did not get them the PSP 24 hours before anyone else did. It's the classic example of waiting for 2 hours in line for a 5 minute rollercoaster.
Le français vous intéresse?
uh...what other major portables are you talking about? My Gameboy SP has a rechargable battery.
You know, your north is not as far north as our (Canada's) south. The same thing applies to temperatures. Up here, we get closer to 5F right now (normal high). Heck, our geese go to Minnesota to "winter over"! /me ducks
That it is.
DS has sold half a million units in Japan so far, and has sold more than a million worldwide. This is more than double the units than PSP has even shipped. Do you suppose that the long lines for the PSP have anything to do with the fact that the unit is in short supply?
I think it's immediately clear that both handhelds don't have much in the way of games at the moment. I would be hard pressed buying a game for the PSP right now. I own Feel the Magic for DS, but I bought it mainly because I wanted to get a feel for the capabilities of the system.
So really, in absence of good games, it's early adopters who are picking up the consoles. What will determine the winner in the long run is the quality of the hardware and the game selection.
Square-Enix seems firmly entrenched in Nintendo's territory this time around, and Nintendo seems to have RPGs in the bag, boasting a lineup of things such as Xenosaga, Baten Kaitos, Final Fantasy, and others.
Nintendo also has the benefit of being able to supplement DS's weak launch lineup with GBA games. If you have a PSP, you have to make do with the crappy selection of launch games... which honestly won't go far. I wouldn't ever bring my DS with me anywhere if all I had to play was the demo cart and Feel the Magic. My DS still plays my GBA library for the most part.
In terms of hardware quality, PSP has superior graphics, and a bigger screen. To counter that, DS has 2 screens, and a very innovative input device for a handheld console. PSP seems doomed to recieve mostly PS2 ports and never be far from a power plug, while the DS has the stamina to go for a long time without meeting a power plug, and has a library of games that seem to work well on a handheld. (wario ware, pokemon, dragon quest monsters, etc.)
But I would agree with you when you say PS2 all over again. I remember a year of mind numbingly horrible games, and an extremely limited number of consoles at launch so Sony could show how they were selling out so fast and build up hype. I don't think it will work this time though. PS2 took the market anyways, as it's all there was. This time Nintendo is going head to head with Sony. Sony won't have a whole year to get someone to make a decent game.
.. I am too often afflicted by
- A paper size called "Letter"
- Dictionaries that seem to think everyone wants to use American
- A strange date format of month/day/year
- a request for a ZIP code
- Rulers that use a ancient measurement system named "inches"
and when you hear phrases such as "it was a chilly 32 degrees" - you just get absolutely fucking confused.
PSP's highest rated launch game is Ridge Racers (yep, the one with 10 second load times when changing tracks, and a 20 second load time to start the game). Ridge Racer on DS is NOT a port of the N64 game. It features a new control scheme, and is an entirely new Ridge Racer game with tracks from previous games. I don't care enough about Asphalt Urban GT to even bother looking for it, so I'll just give you that one. No wipeout game (to my knowledge... you can try to prove me wrong) has ever sold a million copies. All the games I listed have sold a million copies with each incarnation.
:) I love tech, it's true. But there's some tech I dislike. Things such as a Divx player, a Sega Game Gear, an N-Gage, an Xbox, etc. Things like that just aren't worth my time or money.
Gran Turismo 4 Mobile is supposed to be an exact port of the PS2 version. (or close to it).
N64 was the big console of the era. Lots of people held off from the Saturn and the Playstation to wait for it (as the N64 was perpetually delayed, and always just around the corner). In the first year of the N64's life, it outsold the PSX by far.
BTW slashdotters love tech, right? I don't understand why so many are against PSP when it clearly surpasses NDS in engineering quality. If you love nice hack and Mario, buy NDS. If you love PlayStation and serious tech, buy PSP. If you love both and afford both, then buy both!
I love this quote though, so I am going to reply to it directly.
I have no interest in PSP because (as I've repeated already several times), it has no games of interest, the hardware seems fragile, the battery life is absurdly short, and the price is way too high. These are not characteristics of good engineering.
I'm just tired of those misinformed.
lol.
You've definitely got your Nerd and Geek definition the wrong way around, although your Dork definition is correct.
Nerd: Often unwashed, can't dress, can't interact with girls, love star trek and babylon 5 and know alien languages. Like techy stuff, but don't actually understand it.
Geek: Likes and understands techy stuff, educated in their field of geekery, can get girls (usually geek girls, but that's a bonus to them). Enjoy 'nerdy' shows but don't obsess over them apart from dissecting the techy stuff in the show ('ha! that's bollocks'). Has an idea about hygiene.
I'm a geek, I lean more towards being a hardware geek. My porn is hi-res pictures of new motherboards, chipsets, processors and the like.
On topic, queuing in the cold is a stupid thing that obsessives do. Dammit, just wait a bit longer and get it in comfort.
You have dork right, but nerd and geek backwards. A computer nerd is the guy with tape on his glasses. This use of the word "nerd" predates computers, and goes right back to slide rules. Geek, on the other hand, is a term reinvented (from someone who works for a circus who eats anything, esp. the heads of live chickens - check a dictionary) by the computer nerd/geek communities, originating in college towns (esp. communities around UC Berkeley, UC Santa Cruz, MIT, et cetera) to describe nerds with social skills.
Granted, those social skills might not carry a lot of weight amongst your "ordinary" groups of people, but nerds can't even interact with other nerds properly.
Geeks are also considered to have desires more inline with society, such that they will wear nice (or at least interesting, "look at me") clothing and drive fast cars (optional) but you get my drift. They're people concerned with more than math, physics, or computers. If they are utilizing their geek knowledge in public it's usually for their own direct benefit (to wit: getting laid, making money, et cetera) or for nefarious purposes.
Behind all this of course, geeks and nerds are basically the same people. The geeks just aren't as obsessive. Of course, this is all just labeling, and it's never all that reliable.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"