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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."
Is it longer than the battery life?
Tailgate party, Anyone?
..as the insane line outside the new Apple Store in London when it opened a couple of weeks ago. People were out there in sub freezing temperatures, some for over 24 hours. I thought they were nuts, the lot of em, especially considering there was no new product on sale.
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?
Back in my day, our portables ran off 4 AA batteries, and ran for 45 minutes! And no fancy polygons, no sir, we had black and yellow sprites! And the dot matrix screen even had a motion blur feature! And we liked it! We used to carry it to school, up hill in the snow both ways, and they were heavy mind you! Of course, color had yet to be invented in those days....
- "Scientia non habet inimicum nisp ignorantem"
Come on. It's -2C right now here in Calgary and it's comfortable.
As a side note, I may not be as confident as Nintendo, but I certainly am a lot more interested in the DS than the PSP, despite the fact that the PSP technology is undoubtedly sexy and desirable.
Early reports are that the PSP has 5 hours of battery--and that's with a non-intensive (puzzle) game with no backlight or speaker or wireless connectivity-- and also slow loading times. 2-3 hours of battery life sounds more reasonable for the games everyone is interested in (3D heavy Ridge Racer, etc...), which is just not enough time. Couple this with launch titles that are almost totally sequels or so generic as to be indistinguishable from sequels, and even the still-somewhat-gimmicky DS just seems a lot more fun with a lot less headache.
...and the PSP gets 40 rods to the hogshead, and that's the way we likes it...
Other than the number of units currently available - 200,000 - I don't see why people are so hot to get one right away. There are a couple of nice looking racing games but other than that it's a pretty pathetic lineup.
2-3 hours of battery life sounds more reasonable for the games everyone is interested in (3D heavy Ridge Racer, etc...)
Most major handheld game consoles in North America used alkaline AA or AAA batteries. The PSP battery, on the other hand, is rechargeable. Are people really away from 110*n volts for more than 2 to 3 hours at a time, unless they're already making a decided effort to retreat from technology?
(n = 1 in Japan or USA; n = 2 in most of Europe.)
Named after its country of origin 'England', English is a little known dialect used by up to 1.5 billion non-Americans worldwide. Some interesting but obviously incorrect features of the language include:
- queues of people
- wonderful coloUrs
- the useful metal aluminiUm
- the exotic herbs (h-urbs), basil (ba-zil) and oregano (o-re-gaa-no)
- specialiSed books called 'dictionaries' that tell you how to spell words correctly
Many people using this bizarre gutter speak also subscribe to the pagan belief that water freezes at 0 degrees and that distances should be measured in the forbidden mathematical system of base-10...
Read Pynchon.
Shinjuku (actually the first launch is at there, 6:00 am with the SCEI president)/ pspsin.htm
/ shibuya.htm
/ pspetc.htm
/. crowd are still skeptic about PSP, judging from the massive PSP demand in Japan (and the first reviews praising its super-high Sharp LCD quality), especially in contrast to the very quiet NDS launch there, it's almost evident that who pwned whom in the new generation of handhelds, at least in people's mindshare when PSP's supply is still short now. PS & PS2 again.
http://www.watch.impress.co.jp/game/docs/20041212
Shibuya
http://www.watch.impress.co.jp/game/docs/20041212
Yurakucho & Akihabara
http://www.watch.impress.co.jp/game/docs/20041212
Though it seems many
Hot new gadget launched, long queues in Akihabara!
In other news, the sun rose yet again this morning and a woman gave birth to a child - 9 months after having sex!
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
I thought satan kept the lands outside America warm all year round?! This is most confusing news..
Canawah!?
Yeah, but that Webster fellow wanted Americans to make up their own language instead of using English, and had some success.
... but it seems that laws are made to be broken.
The Metric Conversion Act 1975.
We Build Beautiful Websites
I work as an English teacher just over the border from Tokyo in Chiba. I'm about a 20 minute train ride from Akihabara. This morning one of our teachers walked in to the office carrying a PSP and Ridge Racer. Dunno what time he lined up, but he was at work at 11. I had a go at it and I gotta say -- those graphics are nice. The screen is bloody massive for a portable. It's got a nice shiny front and just looks good overall. The screen real estate alone is a big draw and some might say it's heavy, but I didn't really notice. I don't think weight will be a big problem.
Having said that, it's wee bit expensive for my taste (if you get the value pack with the memory card). The exposed screen seems risky and after a few of us got our hands on the thing it had quite a few smudgy fingerprints on it, ruining the shiny front. And I'm skeptical of the little joysticky button thingy in the corner(and why is there only one? Shouldn't there be two for FPS games?) Dunno about the batteries -- he had it pluged in and charging at work, so I sat by the outlet and played it -- though given the battery life estimates, I don't think I'd buy one.
I'm more of a Nintendo kinda guy, anyway, and though I haven't tried the DS yet I'm inclined to buy it instead, given the possibilities for FPS and RTS games with the touchscreen and despite the less impressive graphics. Still, I'll wait and see what games come out before I buy anything. (But with a 12 hour plane ride back to Canada for Christmas next week, it sure would be nice to have either the PSP or the DS).
hoser: Slashdot reader since 1987.
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.
Nice to see the secondary market for stateside delivery is alive and well (like it was for PS2).
Current EBAY prices
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B - D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
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.'"
The guys at Insertcredit.com has the low down on the Battery life. Actual playtesting, no bullshit. "We charged up the battery and slammed the hell out of Ridge Racers with medium screen brightness (too bright hurts your eyes anyway) all over Shinjuku and it took -- I shit you not -- SIX HOURS AND THREE MINUTES for the battery to die. No joke. Put that on your weblogs. " The retching sound you hear in the background are the Nintendo execs choking on their sushi.
I know you're trying to be humorous, but seriously, the original GameBoy had a great battery live. Wikipedia pegs the original at ~35 hours while all the handhelds after that have been significantly less(the GBA SP can get around 16, but only if the light is off). It's really unfortunate that handhelds like that really aren't possible these days.
1) Limit production run to 200,000 units at launch and christmas. /.ers) would hold off until some user reviews come in, each secretly hoping the battery life or limited games lineup will tank the thing.
2) Hardcore japanese/ sony gamers would line up in subzero temperatures for 48 hrs to buy the thing.
3) The skeptics (read:
4) Hardcore japanese/ sony gamers (remember kids, these are people who'd brave subzero temperatures to be first in line, or to secure the christmas package) post glowing reviews, obviously biased by the fact that they're already sold on the PSP and Sony brand.
5) positive reviews cause the skeptics to finally enter the stores, when production 'coincidentally' becomes large enough to cope, after which the numbers mean negative buzz doesn't matter anymore.
6) break open the champagne?
Not entirely plausible? You see, by limiting the run such that only the die hards get a hold of the thing, they are also limiting bad buzz.