Slashdot Mirror
Top Ten Things About the Sony PSP
Hector Martinez writes "A very nice read on some of the features of Sony's portable device." From the article: "Simply put, the character models don't need to be as detailed, because you won't notice the difference anyway. That said, we need to keep in mind that these are first-generation PSP titles. Just look at how the PS2 games have evolved since its launch. If handheld games are looking this good at launch, imagine what a couple years of development time will do. You can expect the same leaps, similar to those found with home based consoles, as developers become more familiar with it. "
The battery time issue is fixable. Everyone was worried about what kind of battery time we would be looking at with such a powerful system. Well as of now, you can expect even the most intensive games to last well beyond 3 hours of play time, while other less graphically intense games can reach up to 6 hours.
Well beyond 3 hours! What is this, a joke?
It was dead before it was even released, and this is why.
"An infinite number of monkeys typing into GNU emacs would never make a good program."
I am definitely going to spend a lot of time deciding where to plop my $150. It takes about six months to see where the best games are coming out for a system. The PSP looks to be more hackable than the DS - AVI playback built in? MP3? Gorgeous screen? Nice. Now, what about the games?
That said, we need to keep in mind that these are first-generation PSP titles. Just look at how the PS2 games have evolved since its launch. If handheld games are looking this good at launch, imagine what a couple years of development time will do. You can expect the same leaps, similar to those found with home based consoles, as developers become more familiar with it.
Signed,
Hector Martinez
Sony PSP Marketing Dept.
Seriously though, the guy gets his own article posted on Slashdot and it is a "nice read". More like PSP love fest. The article failed to mention all the complaints that have been reported about discs popping out, bad pixels, etc. Why didn't he just title the article "The Top Ten Ways to suck Sony Off."
but I can remember a great handheld coming out by a company called Sega that was everything the game-boy wasn't and I haven't seen a game-gear around since 96. weird.
"It'll destroy you if you try to make it mean anything to anyone but yourself." - Henry Rollins
10 Great Things About the N-Gage (not the N-Gage QD)
1. Plays MP3s.
2. Runs the popular Series 60 OS, for which many non-N-Gage-specific apps are already available.
3. Synchronizes built-in PIM software with Mac OS X (iSync) and Windows (Intellisync).
4. Built-in FM radio.
5. Supports on-line play with built-in GPRS radio.
6. Available used for about the same price as a Game Boy Advance SP.
7. Memory expansion with widely-available albeit slow MultiMedia Cards.
8. Includes software that lets me surf the web and check e-mail using the built-in modem.
9. Supports Bluetooth, letting me use a cordless headset instead of Sidetalkin'.
10. Has a built in Media Player, which supports not only MP3s (#1) but also video clips and streaming media.
There, that wasn't too hard. Maybe I should put it on a web page myself and submit it as an article!
For more information, click here.
Live mid-market rates as of 2004.12.28 21:36:07 GMT.
20,790.00 JPY Japan Yen = 201.768 USD United States Dollars
They still claim $186. The 20,790 includes tax. How much is tax in JP? The dollar has been falling a lot lately. I wonder how much more of a loss Sony will be taking, or how much they will have to raise the price in the US.
It may have been $186 back in October, but it is getting more expensive every day.
1 Graphics
Sony kept telling us that the PSP was a mini-PS2 in your pocket. Now that we have screen shots and movies we see overly-simple character models with fewer polygons than characters on the PS1 and games that skimp on textures like Wipeout Pure. Thats okay though because on a tiny screen you wont miss the extra polygons or textures. Just buy our crap and I promise well make better looking games in the future. Honest!
2 Battery
Okay, the battery thing isnt an issue. Really! If you are in the middle of a game and the battery runs out, just plop in another $45 battery and keep playing. Just make sure to keep your spares charged and in a huge bag to carry around with your huge game cases and the charger. Also, make sure to save your game cause those rumors you heard about the game being suspended while you swap the battery were spread by Sony fanboys and arent true.
3 - Music playback
Yep! Now you can play music on your PSP. If you dont believe us, check out the great article about it on IGN that gives us the low-down. 1 directory of music with no ID3 tag support to sort on artist/genre/album. No crossfade like your rio Karma so expect a gap between songs. No album art cover or any imaginative use of the huge screen at all. No real EQ settings for bass and treble. Look out iPod, we have the Walkman of the 21 st century here.
4 - Wireless too
The PSP follows in the footsteps of the Nintendo DS showing that you can have fun without wires. Unlike the DS, you have to manually turn on the wireless capabilities or your battery will loose juice like a sieve. It kind of sucks that you cant just automagically find other players and that you have to worry about the battery slipping away faster than the awesome 3-hours than you may already get, but hey, thats progress!
5 - Sleep mode
One of the drawbacks to a disc-based system is load time. To help overcome some of the boot-up and loading time for the PSP, it allows you to put the system on sleep mode with a flick of a button. You wont really need this feature though, since after a short burst of gaming, your battery will need a recharge anyways.
6 - Movie playback.
The PSP plays back MP4-formatted movies, right off the memory stick. Were still working on a way to make this thing less complicated, but right now you need at least a couple pieces of software to make the movie conversion. One is Decrypter, to rip movies off of your DVDs and store them in VOB format files, and in conjunction with that you will need 3GP Converter, a free utility that converts video files to MP4. (really, I dont even need to make fun of this one. It is a joke already. It should be noted though that you can only play 320x240 movies, the same resolution movies my phone already plays. So much for a high-resolution screen since you can only play low-resolution movies on it.)
7 - Strong third-party support.
The PSP should have a huge selection of craptacular 3 rd party games available throughout its short lifespan. 3 rd party support is guaranteed cause Sony does not really make any 1 st party games, but buys other companies to support its own products. You are sure to see games like generic off-road racing PSP, retarded golf simulation that tries to be funny PSP and a shitload of shovelware from the evil EA games. 3 rd party companies are expected to show the greatest support making extra batteries for the PSP that explode in your pocket when they bump your keys.
8 - The price is going to be right
If the unit comes in at the totally reasonable price of $185, like it is in Japan right now, you may be a happy camper. Before you have the register biscuit ring you up, make sure to grab a few added necessities to make playing fun. Memory Card - $49 You dont HAVE to have a memory card, but you really do. Extra Battery - $
Hell! When you break it down, the N-Gage sounds MUCH better than the PSP!
The PSP doesn't support AVI, it supports the UMD movie discs. It doesn't appear yet that you are going to be able to play your own movie content.
However, Nintendo is releasing an add-on for the DS and GBA SP that will allow for playing of custom video and audio content that looks to be around $50.
I'm still curious as to how much the PSP is going to cost in the US. As mentioned at the bottom of this article that appeared earlier on Slashdot, they said a straight conversion of the price from Japan would be around $460. I'm not sure how accurate that is considering I kept hearing that the price in Japan would convert to around $185 in the US.
Forget the whales - save the babies.
the article was just salivating at what the PSP *MIGHT* be, once they fix all the current issues. i don't buy it.
Just look at how the PS2 games have evolved since its launch. If handheld games are looking this good at launch, imagine what a couple years of development time will do. You can expect the same leaps, similar to those found with home based consoles, as developers become more familiar with it.
whaaa? no. Gran Turismo A-spec was one of the first games released for that system, and it's still probably the best looking game ever released for it. 4 years of tweaking have yielded incremental at best improvements. people worried idly about the PS2 being underpowered, and those worries proved to be all too well founded. it's easily the weakest of the major players in that department.
The battery time issue is fixable.
fixable?! yes, if sony feels like it. it's also possible that sony will upgrade the system so it runs on gumdrops and spits out hundred dollar bills. the technology is there!!
Music playback.
or right like what new gadget CANT play mp3's? my car keys will probably have hard drives by next year. big deal.
i could live a little longer in this prison
You are taking the issue that is apparently most important to you (battery life) and extrapolating it to be the most important issue to others.
I think the DS is a cool piece of hardware, but if all they can do game wise is Mario rehashes and goldfish vomiting games, then I think they will struggle. I think the PSP, with its multimedia capabilities AND games will be the the portable system I buy (if I buy one.) But that's just me.
I do think there are enough like me that the PSP isd not "dead in the water" like above posters want to think. I'll spend $200 on the PSP, why would I not be willing to spend another $40-50 on another battery if needed?
BC
I just got my Dell Axim x50v. It's a Pocket PC.
It was $375 - quite a bit more than the PSP. Keep in mind, however, that Dell is making a profit on the unit while Sony is selling the PSP for a loss.
It's clearly not optimized for gaming. But, here's the lowdown.
The screen is VGA (640x480) with a 3:4 aspect ratio. It's quite a bit higher in res than the PSP screen.
The unit has WiFi, like the PSP, but it also has bluetooth for connecting to a mobile phone.
It doesn't need expensive memory sticks. You can use either CF-based (up to 8GB flash, or use a microdrive like the iPod Mini) or SD-based (up to 2GB flash) media. You can use both slots at once.
The unit has a faster processor than the PSP (Intel PXA270 @ 612MHz) and it has a good 3D accelerator (Intel 2700G - based on the PowerVR core used in the Dreamcast, with 16MB of memory - 4 times more than the PSP).
Battery life is only around 2.5 hours, but that's with wireless on, the processor set to full speed, and the brightness set to the maximum.
The unit has 64MB of main memory - 8 times more than the PSP. It's an ARM core, like the DS, GBA, Pocket PCs, Palm OS devices, and 100s of other products.
Thanks to the PXA270 and the 2700G, the unit has no problem playing back DIVX/XVID movies at VGA resolution. You can download the trailers off of the Divx website and play them right on the unit without conversion - and they look great.
The Axim isn't really a Dell product at all - it's produced by a company called HTC. HTC also produces many of the iPaqs.
Microsoft could absolutely own the mobile market. Here's how:
1: Call up HTC and ask for a unit with these specs
- VGA touchscreen
- Intel PXA270 + Intel 2700G platform
- 64MB SDRAM, 64MB flash, 16MB VRAM
- 2 SD slots
- WiFi
- A game optimized case & buttons
Since the device is based on existing hardware and could simply be a modification of an existing Pocket PC, design time would be short and the unit could be on store shelves in quantity by next Christmas.
2: Develop an OS to run on the system based on Windows CE. Since similar hardware platforms already run Windows CE, there isn't a lot of work to be done there. Microsoft already has a compact DirectX framework that works with the Intel 2700G, they already have the OS, they already have a media player. All they need is a nice UI to tie everything together and a SDK to make development easy.
3: Ship the SDK. Get game development going. The SDK should make it easy to port XBox games - not a huge problem given the fact that WinCE has a similar API to Windows and the fact that the unit runs a variant of DirectX.
4: Launch. If Dell can make a profit at $375, Microsoft loses only about $110 on each unit at $200 (assuming that Dell's profit is $10, that Microsoft is charging $20 for the WinCE license, that the cradle costs $10, that the Bluetooth chip costs $10, and that Dell's "free" shipping costs $5.)
Regardless, here's what we see:
- Microsoft launches a product that is largely compatible with the XBox. Call it the XBox pocket.
- The unit has comparable graphics to the PSP, plus a better screen, enhanced video/audio playback, a touchscreen, and better battery life.
- Microsoft ships the unit with IE for Windows CE, plus an organizer that syncronizes with Outlook.
- Microsoft ships the unit with Windows Media Player 10. The unit plays Windows Media files, MP3s, and even WMA-DRM files purchased online.
- Microsoft ships a cable that allows the unit to link to the XBox. The device already has a USB client port (for connection to a PC) and the XBox controller ports are USB.
- Users can download games from XBox Live or purchase them at a place in a retail store. Games have DRM (of course) and are loaded onto SD cards. A 1GB SD card holds 16 games (at 64MB each - plenty of space with careful programming) and is only around $80.
Any thoughts?
Too bad the developers of Dreamcast games never had the chance to become more familiar with the Dreamcast.
The PSP follows suit with a powerful wireless functionality that can work up to 100 feet away, even through walls. Someone get out the tin foiled hats! This thing is so powerful it will be able to get you through the wall. I can't wait until we see what other applications this "wireless through wall" technology will be put to.
1. 0h
2. my
3. gawd
4. my
5. batteries
6. ran
7. out
8. again!
9. and
10. again
From TFA: "Here at Gear Live we're a little more patient, (okay, maybe just a little more broke) but that hasn't kept us from finding out all we could about the handheld. "
The author doesn't even have a unit yet! This entire article is based on what they could "find out." This is not much different than the Nintendo Fanboy article posted not to long ago. (Just not quite as childish sounding).
You've been up and down this thread bashing it. The people that I know that imported one love it and the developers that I know that have worked with it are busting a nut. But hey, you fanboy up huh?
They must not be very imaginative then. The possibilities inherant in the DS's feature set from a game design standpoint are very exciting. The PSP is just same old, same old only handheld. There's nothing you can do on it that you can't do better on an existing console.
You're not a very critical thinkin' guy either Mike. Let me take off my fanboy hat and put on my critical thinking cap.
I predict in terms of games:
1. The DS will have better controls for FPSes, anything menu driven(like RPGS), and some unique puzzle games. If it would benefit from mouse input/a programmable interface, it'll have a better control scheme on the DS.
2. The PSP will have better controls for anything where the analog stick is necessary. Racing games, 3rd person 3D games like GTA, stuff like that. Don't expect any FPSes with good controls.
Those are the gametypes best suited to each system imo. Pick your poison.
Anyway, only devotees are gonna be buying either system at this point. Normal people should wait until towards the end of the year and evaluate the game selection then.
The key to the enjoyment of pop music is to replace any instance of "love" with "C.H.U.D."
The original article is the one that makes excuses for poor graphics, "Simply put, the character models don't need to be as detailed, because you won't notice the difference anyway". Thanks for making that assumption pal. We were lied to about the prowess of the system, developers too. Koei, in a recent interview, stated that they had to dumb-down all of their PS2 graphics and textures to get them to work on the PSP. It isn't a PS2 in the palm of your hand. Maybe a PS1.5, but then so was the N64.
The battery is a huge issue, no matter how much Sony tells us it isn't. Don't kid yourself. What other device do you own that has such an amazingly short battery life?
Music playback is important. The top-ten article says so. They state it as #3. Sony tells us the PSP is the Walkman of the 21st century. Compared to MP3 players from the last century, it seems to fall short. Very short.
Wireless? The article says the wireless is like the DS'. Why is that in the top ten? On the PSP, the wireless will only be used by the hardcore since you have to coordinate when/where you will turn on the wireless. On the DS it is easy to find other people playing. Why not just let software control the Wi-Fi access? Do you REALLY need another switch/button on the thing?
Sleep mode is really a non-issue, I'll admit. It sleeps. Good!
The movie playback is a joke. Sony keeps stating that is one of the big draws of the system. It is poorly implemented and weak. It does not take advantage of the system's strengths, the big screen, to play high-resolution movies. Instead, it uses a cryptic file naming convention (movies files also have to be all upper case otherwise the PSP ignores them), and requires many steps to convert your movies. When done, you can watch low-resolution video clips off of overly expensive Memory Sticks. WHY is this considered a feature? As for UMD movies, do you REALLY want to buy your movies all over again on UMD? If they come with DVDs, can you buy a cheaper version of the DVD without the UMD, otherwise, you are spending the money to make UMDs that you'll never use.
So far, the PSP's biggest supporter looks to be EA. We know how they make such quality games. Personally, I'd rather have great-quality first-party titles rather than off-road-racing, tries-to-be-funny-golf or EA shovelware made by EA slaves. Maybe others like those kinda games. Go figure.
I did mention photo viewing because the original article did. Reviews state it is slow unless you are using the native resolution of the PSP. Also, the bars it puts around your photo if it isn't the right size are white, not black. Never put photos on white, especially when your device is black. Show them on a black background to make the photo stand out. Can you imagine watching a letterbox film with white borders? Silly.
More is coming, for both consoles. Just like how our PS2 was supposed to be able to download games, movies and music. Or remember how our PS2 was supposed to have toy-story-like graphics? It was going to be the media center of the future. Remember the printer and web cam that were supposed to come out for the Dreamcast? Point is; it is hype. You have to see through the hype to the truth. As for the DS, I believe it is just getting started, but I wouldn't buy a DS for the hype, I would buy it for the hardware and the games, including all the GBA games one could play on it.
I think you have mistaken my loathing for being lied to and deceived as Nintendo Fanboyism. The PSP isn't as good as we are being told it is. It is less-capable at a multimedia device than modern PDAs. It has serious shortcomings and is riddled with poor design choices. They could have forgone the UMD and used Flash media to eliminate the battery and disc issues, but Sony seems intent on forcing a power-hungry disc into a portable handh
Okay, okay, let's clear the air here. We don't need to start a fight here.
B) The battery life is an issue. The PSP has terrible battery life compared to the NDS. Don't act like it's not important.
That's all there is to it. NDS wins.
Of course the PSP and the NDS both will have new and maybe even exciting peripherals. Obviously Nintendo still has a few tricks up their sleeve, and we can also expect more from Sony. (Don't forget Nintendo and Sony are working on their new consoles.)
I know I haven't covered everything, but I don't have that kind of time. (Who am I kidding? I have no life, I just don't feel like researching this further.)
By the way, Mike Hawk, anyone who posts in an online forum isn't too far away from a fanboy.
"May evil beware, and may good dress warmly and eat plenty of fresh vegetables." -The Tick
You cant compare the psp to the gamegear. The gamegear took 6 AA Alkaline batteries and lasted 1 and a half hours. thats a lot of cash. how many kids can afford that much batteries, i know i wasnt able to.
If the gamegear came with a rechargable battery like the PSP I am sure it would have been much much more successful. much more.
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12" ibook, G3 700, 640MB RAM, 20GB HD
Cripes!
Buy what you like, no need to bash the other guys system. Nintendo and Sony are heavyweights, you don't need to promote their products for them, they'll still have the same libraries they were planning anyway.
I for one own a DS and I plan to buy a PSP if it ever gets a game I want on it. (Yeah, I'm a 29 year old man who likes playing Super Mario 64 DS, laugh it up)
First it was Atari vs. Coleco, then NES vs. SMS, then Gameboy vs. a ton of other portables, then SNES vs. Genesis, then Playstation vs. N64 vs. Saturn, then Dreamcast just plain fell on its ass, then X-BOX vs. Gamecube vs. PS2, and now this!
If there is one thing that has ever remained constant across ALL of these fights, It does not matter whose hardware is better, whoever has the best software library wins.
In terms of hardware, if I recall correctly:
Coleco > Atari
SMS > NES
Gamegear, Lynx, and that Turbo Grafx 16 handheld > Gameboy
Genesis somewhat > SNES (SNES had better sound and more colors, but Genesis had a better processor)
Saturn > N64 !! Playstation
Dreamcast = Nice hardware but only like 1 good game and the worlds worst controller design ever.
X-BOX > PS2 !! Gamecube
and just for fun:
PSP > DS - Yes the hardware is better for the PSP. Only a Nintendo fanatic will argue otherwise. But as can be demonstrated throughout history. It does not matter whose hardware is better, it matters who has better games. (that, and with portables, battery life is a huge factor)
From the article: " Better yet, the system can be charged while you play it," and " You can also play the PSP while charging the battery at the same time." What device with a rechargeable battery can't be charged while you play it? I know my electric razor can't (and it's annoying for sure) but I wouldn't say this is some super feature for the PSP.
My Xbox Live Gamer Card
Dreamcast only 1 good game? Sorry my friend but the DC had the highest percentage of AA and AAA games out of any system in history. (including current generation)
Color screens are nice, we can all agree. But I hate having to worry about batteries all the time. My little grayscale handheld could run for a month before I'd need to swap batteries.
I think I'm just going to get another H330 off eBay. I want the damn think to work, whenever I need it. I play games with lush graphics... but not on a three-inch screen. If you want nice games on a screen like that, you'd better not force people to ration their usage and manage power like that.
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
File names have to be all uppercase and be formatted like this "E:\MP_ROOT\100MNV01" where E is your memory stick drive. Not intuitive. Even the extension has to be upper case or the PSP won't recognize it.
You can find out more on the Engadget article.
http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000980024404/
"if you had a 90 minute movie, and used the the same settings we did to convert to to AVI then to MP4, you would have the whole movie in 1100MB, which, unfortunately, is larger than the largest Memory Stick Duo currently available."
For photo viewing, GIF, BMP, and PNG files aren't supported by the PSP, but standard JPG ones are. When you have a full-sized 4 or 5 megapixel JPG file, the PSP takes a bit of time for it to load, about 3 seconds for a 1.8MB JPG file. It automatically crops the photo (most photos are in the 4:3 format), leaving white space on the sides of the picture when it is displayed.
The PSP is lacking some of the nicer features of the dedicated music devices. There is no form of database support which, in portable players such as the iRiver, allows users to easily view all the music contained on the device sorted by artist, genre and album. The system does support M3U playlists, but it's very specific about where you need to put files, and also somewhat limiting.
The PSP also loses points because it doesn't allow you to browse the full directory structure of the Memory Stick. Your stuck looking at whatever the XMB interface decides to show you, which is limited to music files and directories contained in the one Music directory. iRiver and iPod feel more convenient in the amount of access they give.
If someone has an example of the PSP showing album covers from ID3 tags, I'd be happy to see it.
http://psp.ign.com/articles/573/573413p4.html
Of course Sony has more 3rd party support, but Nintendo's 1st party games have their own unique crowd. It's just a matter of personal preference here; no clear victor. I would like to see some evidence to back that up. Last I heard, Nintendo had more games in development, and most of the good 3rd parties seem to be on Nintendo's side this time around.
That's right. The N-Gage QD doesn't play MP3s or have Bluetooth.
For more information, click here.
Let me just check the back of all my old Nintendo consoles for all those ports and expansion slots that were never used...
Nintendo Company Ltd had a disk drive for the Family Computer, a satellite receiver for the Super Famicom, and a disk drive for the Nintendo 64. Nintendo of America opted out of the disk drives because it observed the widespread FDS piracy, and Sega Channel didn't do so hot either. In addition, a RAM expansion that fit into the front of the N64 came out in all N64 territories. Now, the Game Boy Player uses the GameCube's High-Speed Port, and the broadband adapter uses another port on the bottom.
Sweet! I stand corrected.
For more information, click here.