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PSP North American Launch Date
captain writes "According to PSP411, Sony C.E. President and CEO Ken Kutaragi announced today at CES 2005 that the PSP will have a North American launch in March, followed by Europe around the same time. In Japan, the near-PS2 quality portable gaming device sold only about 500k units on account of GPU shortages. While the price and exact date aren't entirely clear, the USD equivalent of the Japanese sale price is a little under $200USD. Some are speculating that the price could be even lower to contest Nintendo DS's long-held portable gaming throne even further." Some good writeups about the announcement at Gamespot and 1up.com.
I'll agree:
... who the hell are you (or insert some other The Who song lyric here).
I got the Disc Read Error (which eventually led me to buy the Xbox, so yay!) with my PS2 and I got one of the first runs of the PS, you know, the one where the laser focus was a micrometer off and caused FMV to skip like mad and back in the day I bought an original Walkman that got recalled later because of battery issues.
So as bad as I want a PSP, and as much as I want a PS3 to replace my PS2, I've learned my lesson and am going to wait at least 9 months before I pony up the dough.
Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice
Why do I M2 everything negatively?
In Japan, the near-PS2 quality portable gaming device sold only about 500k units on account of GPU shortages.
If I recall correctly, the PS2 had a similar problem on its launch--there was a shortage of CPUs.
Who supplies Sony with these processors, and why can they never meet demand?
I think it is kind of odd too that Nintendo has kept backwards-compatibility in their portable gaming lineup, but has failed to do so with their consoles. At this point, gameboy has so many hundreds of titles available both new and old that it probably crushes any console as far as available titles (anyone got any hard data on this?).
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 is the magic number.
I thought the same.. until I read about this
0 4. 1223.1054.34002.htm
Lumines - Bandai - 2005
Take one part puzzle game with one part musical experience and tack on some trippy visuals and you've got Lumines, the brainchild of Tetsuya Mizaguchi (the man behind Rez). We've managed to get our hands on the Japanese version of the game and needless to say, we have to do everything in our power not to play it all day long.
The idea I simple: match up four colored blocks to that they form a square. But add to mix a unique music-based combo system and you have one of the most innovative puzzle games every made on any console. Lumines also packs in some truly impressive music and sound that will have you toe-tapping for hours on end. Out of all the PSP titles we've played so far, this is the one that's consumed our lives and we bet it will consume yours, as well.
http://www.gameinformer.com/News/Story/200412/N
no
I have had all kinds of issues with my Playstation 2. Most of them caused by moving and or dropping the console on the floor. I've been able to fix them all thanks to the information one can find on the internet.
The last time I messed up my PS2 was when my cat ran into it and it fell about a foot and a half to the floor. When I picked it up the disk drive was stuck in a semi-in, semi-out position. I took the whole think apart, which required me to seperate the disk drive from the motherboard. When I put everything back together again it worked better that it had in a year.
So even though I agree that early adopters accept a certain amount of fishiness when it comes to consoles, it can also be a useful learning experience for those who like to deal with hardware issues.
Go Gusties
Huh?
.
The reports that many of Japan's larger department stores did not accept preorders for the PSP fearing shortages was widely reported, as was the fact this contributed to the long lines on the PSP's launch day. A few quick glances at google turn up:
Like many other major retailers in Japan, Yodobashi did not take PSP preorders. As a result, more than 1,200 hopeful game fans lined up throughout the long, cold night, some taking up their position as early as 3pm the previous day.
Meanwhile, shortages of Sony's PlayStation Portable are already beginning to hit home in Japan, with the vast majority of retailers no longer able to take preorders ahead of Sunday's launch of the console."
It will be interesting to see what happens (in just over a week) when the PSP is launched in Japan. Retailers have not been accepting many preorders, and the device will be in short supply.
Sony's PSP preorder campaign was... practically nonexistent. There was no advance warning of preorders, which had most people checking in with shops on an almost daily basis trying to find out what was up. Of course, shopkeepers were completely in the dark as well.
What you won't find if you look around, however, are reports that the 2005 shipment of PSPs sold out. The first day shipment of PSPs of 200,000 did mostly sell out (i saw a figure of 160,000-180,000 in the hands of consumers on day one, which would seem to imply it would have been sold out entirely in some areas), but by the end of the year there would have been many of the PSP's 2005 shipment of 500,000 available-- I cannot find total sales figures for the year but by December 26 only 360,000 PSP units had been sold, which would have meant nearly half of the PSPs sold were on the first day. Again, the illusion of PSP "shortages" appears to mostly be a result of low availability on the first day, and since such a large chunk of 2005's PSPs weren't sold it seems reasonable to say that even if Sony had had more GPUs, they would NOT have sold any more PSPs.
I'm not really so sure..
The PSP will win, unfortunately. It is the better machine. There really is no contest. The screen rocks.
The Game Gear was also clearly the better machine. Its screen rocked too. It didn't help. The problem is that what is "better" for a video game console may not be better for handhelds, since "better" comes with portability costs. So far Nintendo's been the only company to ever realize this, and this is the reason they've owned the market for so long.
The movie playing rocks.
I'm not so sure this is really going to help it though. Since UMD movies appear to not be happening anymore, the movie playing is limited to what you can stuff on a memory stick. It seems kind of hard to find a memory stick big enough to comfortably hold a movie for less than the $100 range. This might help the PSP into a super-high-end gadget-addict niche, but probably won't help in the general market-- and on the offchance the general market decides they like this feature, it doesn't mean the PSP will be able to benefit from it. Nintendo has an aftermarket movie and mp3 player they'll be releasing in Japan soon, and they can release it in America if it's to their benefit. It fits into a GBASP or the GBA slot of a DS, and it uses SD cards instead of memory sticks, which seem to run at about half the price.
The only thing you say I really object to though is this:
Super Nintendo 64 DS has graphics slightly worse than the N64 version.
This is just plain wrong. The DS doesn't have the graphics of the PSP, but the N64 just isn't any comparison to the DS at all. Mario 64x4 far outdoes the 64 version, plus the framerate is much better, and this is just a touched-up port-- the DS has much more to offer...
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts