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PSP Usage Lower Than Expected
Next Generation has an article analyzing the numbers of a recent PSP usage survey. Despite a showing that there is strong brand loyalty, the numbers are probably not what Sony was hoping for. From the article: "Most said they had no plans to buy any UMD movies. Less than 50% said they would use the PSP to watch video or view pictures using a memory stick. The figure drops to less than 30% among female users. Sony will be concerned that 50% of users admitted they had not touched their PSP in 'some time'. 25% of male users have updated their PSP for Internet use, with only 10% of female users doing same."
The same goes for pictures; I don't know about you, but I don't think I'd ever have any need to look at pictures on a PSP. The screen on digital cameras fulfills that need nicely.
The games are a bigger issue. Lack of interesting or good games seems to be the problem here, although Sony has time to change that.
Bottom line? We've heard all of this before, and what we haven't is common sense.
Goo goo g'joob.
I find this un-suprising given the lack of a decent game library at the present time. The driving force behind any successful gamming device launch is of course, great games, which the PSP sorely lacks at the moment. I'm more suprised that sony execs. thought that the UMD movie sales would somehow make up for this. I think if the PSP can improve the quality of its available games by christmas, it should be ok. What it needs right now is a big hit of a game, thats unavailable anywhere else.
"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro" -Hunter S. Thompson
However, once I discovered emu and homebrew, I've been using it every day. I have ROMs for all the NES and SNES games I own, and I have the Tenchi no Mon browser and pVNC also. It's amazing driving to work, scanning for networks the whole way...
I feel a little bad for Sony because I only have three more planned UMD game purchases - MGA, GTA and GT4M. Until they deliver the RPG goodness (FF3 and Ultima Exodus is fun enough for now) then I don't think they'll be getting much more money from me.
On PSP purchases anyway. I just bought my 101st PS2 game last week (Atelier Iris)...
GTRacer
- Needs another lifetime to complete the RPGs
Defending IP by destroying access to it? That makes sense, RIAA/MPAA. Go to the corner until you can play nice!
There was an interesting point made on Xplay a while back (say what you will about that show, personally I don't mind it). The point was that even though the DS has a larger game library than the PSP, the number of quality games that each platform has is roughly equal.
I own a PSP, and I know people with the DS. I'm still enjoying the games I have for my PSP, and by and large they're still enjoying their DS games. But for the most part they've ignored a lot of the games they've bought in favor of Advance Wars or Nintendogs now. Meanwhile I'm enjoying the new 2.0 firmware update and the games I bought when the unit launched, as well as some of the ones that have been released subsequently.
I prefer the PSP over the DS because of its features, not just the games.
"I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
-Hoban Washburn
They should also work on porting PS2 games to the PSP.
Sony has made it clear that they don't want this to happen.
I would like an HD disc format for the simple reason that I want a decent, and cheap format to store and exchange the things I shoot and produce with my HD camcorder. I could care less about buying movies in HD (Thouth if I had a player I certaily would buy them.) Even though there are a few HD recording formats that actually are available to consumers right now (DVHS, WVHS, HDV) they are either special purpose, expensive, or may not be a good future-proof-for-the-next-12-months choice.
A lot of people make the same argument as the parent post -- that nobody will buy HD discs because there aren't that many people with HDTV's, but you see, the thought process for consumers is completely the other way around. People are not buying HDTV's because there's very little to watch on them. The introduction of an HD disc-based format and players and the sudden influx of HD content at or about the same price as the DVD content will drive the uptake of HDTV's. For some stupid reason the manufacturers have tried to force the market to do the opposite and buy the HDTV's first.
A more appropriate comparison might be to look at the way that consumers have progressed through their equipment as the recording formats have changed in the past. When DVD was introduced, the picture quality was really (and arugably still isn't) above high-end VHS, so it certainly did not drive people to purchase better television sets... yet people DID! Many people were driven to purchase 16:9 TV's to better enjoy the widescreen formats that DVD offered, and many purchased larger TV's to have a more cinema-like experience at home as the price of discs was reduced. Likewise, before the introduction of DVD, multichannel audio in the home was almost nonexistant. Some people had sprung for 'surround sound' setups offering Dolby ProLogic, but they were few and far between and the actual experience was somewhat lackluster... But look at how DVD's drove the adoption of 5.1 audio setups -- even though a really superior stereo setup will probably sound better to a listener than a cheap 5.1 setup, people are buying them up as fast as they can make them. Car manufacturers are even advertising 5.1 audio for backseat DVD systems. Seriously -- 5.1 audio in the car?!? Although when the car is parked inside in a garage, it's arguably one of the best spaces to use a multichannel audio setup, you can't hear the difference over the road noise!
Sony has released a utility to shrink DVD movies to mp4 format for playing on your memory stick.
3" DVDs wouldn't work in 98% of the players out there. UMD is an ISO registered format, and down the road it should replace the MiniDisc (MD) player. UMD burners will hit the market eventually. I wouldn't be suprised if there's a sort of PSP UMD attachment down the road for the PS3 the same way there's a GBA attachment for the gamecube.
If you're going to be dissapointed in Sony for something, it should be either a) not including a UMD copy of the movie in the delux edition of DVDs, or b) not implimenting bluray technology. As it stands, the PSP is very versitile.
moox. for a new generation.