Slashdot Mirror
PSP Smashes Sales Records in the UK
404Ender writes "According to recent numbers the PSP has sold more than 185,000 units since launching September 1. This blows the previous record away, which happened to be set by the Nintendo DS. This is wonderful news for fans of the Sony handheld, and it certainly quiets many of the naysayers who have been pointing to the success of the DS sales compared to the PSP. Does this solidify Sony's position in the handheld market with a firm foot in the door?"
The PSP broke the N-Gage's record?!
Yay. Long live the PSP!
Does this solidify Sony's position in the handheld market with a firm foot in the door?
... Next.
No.
Of course it does, it really is an impressive piece of kit for the price and is better for gamers since a bit of healthy competition in the handset market for nintendo will hopefully produce better games for both the DS and PSP.
Perhaps the sales figures are inflated somewhat by the fact that it's been released in other markets for some time. People here have had a chance to hear lots of reports of it from elsewhere before the launch. It also probably has a larger set of games at launch than the DS did, for the same reason. It will be more interesting to see how many units in total each sell after a year on the market.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
05/Sep/2005
Sony's new PSP console has sold an estimated 185,000 total market hardware units in its launch week, outdoing Nintendo's DS (87,000 units at launch) to become the most successful UK console launch ever. 24 games were available at launch, the largest for any console, with 20 entering the All Formats Top 40 and 9 games breaking into the Top 10. Games were priced at £34.99 with the console itself retailing at £179.
Sony PSP takes over the All Formats chart this week with the biggest software launch for any console. 20 out of the 24 PSP launch titles enter the All Formats Top 40 with Sony's 'Ridge Racer' (PSP) topping the list, knocking Codemasters' 'Brian Lara International Cricket 2005' (PS2/XB/PC) down to No2 and becoming not only the fastest selling PSP game but also the fastest selling Ridge Racer game across any format. 1 in 5 people who bought a PSP game bought 'Ridge Racer', but it was over 6 years ago since a Ridge Racer title reached number 1 in the All Formats chart with Ridge Racer Type 4 (PS1) back in week 17 1999. 'Brian Lara International Cricket 2005' is the only non-PSP game in the Top 10 with PSP games filling all the remaining Top 10 positions and Sony claiming the top 2 PSP games with 'Wipeout Pure' (PSP) entering the All Formats Chart at No3. Sega's 'Virtua Tennis' and Konami's 'Metal Gear Ac!d' debut at No4 and No5 respectively, holding off EA's big PSP release 'Need for Speed: Underground Rivals' which is a new entry at No6. The most popular type of PSP game is racing with 5 racing games in the Top 10 PSP chart, including 'Toca Race Driver 2' at No6 and 'Midnight Club 3: Dub Edition' at No7, while out of the 24 PSP games released, 5 are new IP. Non-PSP new releases are eclipsed by the dominance of Sony's new console with Novalogic's 'Delta Force: Black Hawk Down' (new this week on XB and PS2) debuting at No1 in the Xbox Chart, but only reaching No15 in the All Formats Top 40. Microsoft's new RPG 'Dungeon Siege II' also suffers the same fate, reaching No1 in the PC Full Price Entertainment Chart, but only No33 in an All Formats Top 40 where half of the games are new PSP titles.
Disclaimer - I work for Sony :)
:(
The only longer-term UK figures I can find for DS say that they sold "over 200,000" units in the first six weeks. So it looks like the initial surge of sales is definitely in the PSP's favour. Whether this momentum will continue remains to be seen, but it's still an impressive launch.
Just wish I could afford one myself
Game dev and music blog
Four of my friends bought PSPs. Only one of them got a perfect PSP, the other three got dead pixels.
Whats annoying them is that they are getting conflicting information as to returning.
#1 Returned with no problem. Had another dead pixel got it returned again. Third is ok.
#2 Two dead pixels. Told by shop that they are allowed sell them with a certain amount of dead pixels. Refusing to replace.
#3 same as previous friend except they would exchange if more dead pixels appeared. (same shop).
As a state gets corrupt, its laws multiply; the most corrupt states have the most numerous laws. (Tacitus, Annales 3:27)
Are those figures for actual sales to end customers? According to this1UP article, Sony has an interesting sales counting methodology:
"As a rule, Sony prefers to release "sell-in" figures, or "units shipped" figures -- for instance, it recently announced that it "shipped" 70 million PlayStation 2s worldwide. What that means is that retailers have ordered and received 70 million PS2s, not that consumers have bought 70 million PS2s. Many of those 70 million PS2s have already been bought by consumers, and all of them may eventually be bought, but for now, the "shipped" figure is more impressive."
And also...
"Sony is going against type here. Though it's rounding off its sales figures, at least it is releasing genuine sales figures, a practice to which it is generally averse."
I like my DS and everyone I've shown it to has been impressed by it and enthusiastic about it (even my girlfriend bought one!)...but what my (non-gaming) friends have been talking about is the PSP, and in salivating in the same way my Apple friends were pre ipod launch. It also helps that at launch they have a wider (though not necc. better!) range of games than the DS has after 6 months here. If it wasn't for importing certain items I'd be less enthusiastic about the DS than I am. That will be sorted out by the end of November.
Professor Karmadillo Songs of Science
...but then you would be working for Nintendo.
we all know the reason the Brits love it is that it's great for perving on pr0n in the dunny.
Justifying your PSP puchase by bashing N-Gage has become easier...
Eh, ScuttleMonkey?
......stop crippling it! The day Sony releases a firmware update allowing MP4 video playback from Sony memorystick i WILL buy one, until that day.............. maybe. I don't like buying deliberately crippled hardware, leaves a bad taste in ones mouth. It would be worth Sony's while, because i would even buy one of their hideously expensive 1GB Memorystick Pro's. Sort it out Sony.
Disclaimer: I own every modern console, and alot of older stuff too. I couldn't care less about sales figures, but thought this point was saillant enough to make.
Will wank off Linus Torvalds for fame.
disclaimer: I'm from UK and I hope I haven't fallen for a troll
2 8
4 306
The following stats in general conflict with your opinion. Xbox stats follow what you say, the picture is quite different for other consoles. Especially if you then normalise for population, gdp per head, whichever other metric you choose.
"From gaming-age: http://forums.gaming-age.com/showthread.php?t=336
All shipment figures as of December 2004.
PS2
19.47m Japan
32.86m USA
29.06m Europe
81.39 Total
XB
1.70m Japan (asia pacific- some discrepancy as sony and microsft count as japan, others count as Europe/Pal)
13.20m USA
5.00m Europe
19.90m Total
GC
3.78m Japan
10.11m USA
4.13m Europe
18.02m Total
GBA
15.48m Japan
32.82m USA
17.44m Europe
65.74 Total
DS
1.45m Japan
1.36m USA
0.03m Europe
2.84m Total
"
Taken from http://forum.pcvsconsole.com/viewthread.php?tid=1
Though I must admit, I thought the PSP http://www.sei.cmu.edu/tsp/psp.html would not appeal to such a large audience
Steve Cline http://www.clines.org, http://www.objectbap.com
Hello little Anonymous Trollward...
The PSP is just another time wasting device made by a company that saw a crowed market and said me too.
Can you tell me how is the handheld console market crowded? before the PSP the only company "competing" in that market was Nintendo... since the days of the GameBoy... of course I know there where others but, Nintendo did had a real monopoly on this market.
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
I was actually looking forward to the European release since I already own a PSP (a US one), bought for a reasonable price. I don't care about the movies (since I can make them myself from my DVD collection and region encoding mean they don't work) but I was looking forward to being able to buy games locally. I don't think I'll bother for a while - what's the point when I get the same game sent all the way from Honky Kong from Lik-Sang.com and still pay less, even if I did get caught for the duty?
Why would anyone be so eager to buy a PSP in this climate? I realise the PSP is a great console, but to be honest most of the current titles are pretty meh. Lumines is great but most of the others are so-so. I'm looking forward to seeing what GTA & PES looks like when they appear on the PSP but they're at least a month or two away.
The same goes for the XBox 360 BTW in case you think I'm rooting for that. Assuming it appears this side of Christmas, you just know early adopters are going to be raped for their zeal. In return they'll be rewarded with an overpriced box and a handful of games.
Firstly, in case anyone hasn't read that fine article, this is UK sales, not Euro-wide, worldwide or whatever.
But my main point is that they're so impressed with their stuffing of the software charts. Frankly, there's such a massive games drought here in the UK at the moment that I'm almost surprised it wasn't even more 'impressive'; they've got nothing to compete with.
Just as an example, the UK's biggest selling DS title (which people are always desperate to compare the PSP to) is Mario 64. Yes, a launch game. We don't have Nintendogs yet, nor Advance Wars. The last big PC game was Battlefield 2 months ago, and there's been nothing on PS2 worthwhile since God Of War. This was the 'Full Price' chart, so the budget release of the new update to Ghost Recon 2 on the XBox doesn't count, either.
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
What about the best selling video game title of 2004 in the US? GTA3/San Andreas is not even a drop in the bucket.
It sure does not look "a drop in the bucket". You only prove your ignorance of both geo-political matters and economy when you make such sweeping assertions.
Mother is the best bet and don't let Satan draw you too fast.
when the PSP was release here stateside - there was very little reason to purchase one - the launch games were mediocre and the hardware price was twice its nearest competitor.
fast forward to today, the game selection is much better and the movie support has been surprising as well. but thats not the true reason if i did purchase one.
its the availablity of homebrews. that and the huge amounts of pirated software thats available for it. its the same reason why the xbox sold well with the "computer power users"
300 bucks is easy to swallow if you know games can be gotten free....
Europe does matter. A lot. The figures quoted here may not seem immense, but they are the figures for just one European country. The UK has a population of 58 million. Looking at the EU wall-chart stuck up on the wall next to my desk, France's population is 59 million, Germany's is 82 million, Italy is 57 million, Spain is 39 million, the Netherlands are 16 million. That's leaving off umpteen other countries, including some really big (and fairly wealthy) non-EU ones like Turkey. Now, some of these countries are bigger gaming markets than others; certainly the UK, Germany and the Netherlands seem to have more gamers per head of population than France and Spain. However, the overall picture is of an absolutely huge market, at least on a par with the US.
Of course, this gets downplayed a bit in the media. The fact that "Europe" as a whole has a more fragmented retailer base than the USA or Japan means that you don't often tend to see unified sales figures for the whole territory. However, Nintendo's biggest mistake of the last "desktop" console generation has been their utter neglect of the European market, with many games appearing many, many months after US releases, generally either because of obscure business reasons, or a supposed need to add in (usually amateurish) regional translations that most European gamers neither need nor want.
Hmm, I thought the potential US and EU markets were approximately the same size - 780 million vs 760 million people respectively - dismissing a market just because you currently aren't exploiting it properly would seem a little short sighted.
It's nice for PSP owners since it somehow justifies their purchase (in bizarro fanboy land where they compare the sony's and Big-N's stock quotes instead of the quality and playability of games (no matter which system)).
I think PSP still is no competition for DS because it seems to be still necessary to throw 14-year-old-biased-games.slashdot.org-shit at the other handheld in the same article. Even though the other handheld obviously wasn't purchased by the submitter.
I mean what's the point of having games.slashdot.org when this childish crap still makes it to the front? And why are the articles passed by ScuttleMonkey always reading like Fud'ed-Yellow-Press-buzzword-shit?
Thank god, I never bothered to subscribe and pay money for this.
I honestly think no one can tell which handheld is going to win the wars. Personally, I'm tired of seeing Slashdot articles on it (not a flame to Slashdot! I rather see more news than a small flow of news).
I seriously think you all just need to wait 10 years, then add all the figures together and just finally reach a quick solution. PSP sells 4 million, DS sells 3 million. PSP wins, END OF STORY. (or visa versa... which ever you want to win).
But I'm not the one that is dismissing it: the game industry is. This launch is proof of that in and of itself; how much later than the U.S. and Japanese releases is it? Is this a normal course of release for consoles in Europe (the answer is yes). While there might be a great market, economically and creatively, game developers don't seem to care.
"There is no time, sir, at which ties do not matter," Jeeves, (Jeeves and the Impending Doom)
European Union 456,953,258 July 2005 est.
United States 295,734,134 July 2005 est.
From the CIA World Factbook.
the handheld market. PSP's clearly the best hardware in the segment, not to mention all the hacks for it out there. Once it becomes the de facto standard handheld there will be more games, software and movies for it at lower prices.
The PSP is just another time wasting device
Do I have anything better to do on the bus to work?
The European Union is the worlds biggest market:t m
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/2266385.s
However, Europe has traditionally had much smaller sales of game consoles and computer systems than the United States. More game consoles, however, are sold in Europe than in Japan.
As of december 2004, The Sony PS2 had sold 29.06m in Europe, 32.86m in USA and 19.47m in Japan. Given that the launch was later in Europe, it could have sold more in Europa than the US by now Granted, the Xbox have sold more than twice as many units in the US as in Europe.
Also, the EU being the largest market in the world, means that the POTENTIAL for further sales in Europe is larger than the potential for the US. Focusing on the EU as a target market could lead to massive future incomes. Any company would be complete and utter idiots to ignore this market.
Tell friends #2 and #3 to go back to the shop and discuss the Sale Of Goods Act with regards to Merchandising Quality. Tell the shop that they're not allowed sell them with a certain amount of dead pixels by law. That normally makes them think again. If it doesn't try Citizens Advice or even a solicitor.
If enough people do this then shoddy salesmen will get the message
init 11 - for when you need that edge.
Does the internet not exist? Can you not see the horrible games lineup?
And don't forget that "The European Union" is not "Europe". Outside of the EU, you've still got some pretty big nations such as Switzerland, Serbia, Turkey and Romania. Opinions on whether or not to include Russia seem to vary. Some of these countries don't yet have the level of economic development needed for the PSP to be a major force there, but many of them are moving that way fast.
Read the Metro like the rest of us.
The idea that Japan is the major market for games consoles is quite wrong. You need only look at the figures that pglee has provided to see that - for every console EU sales eventually exceed Japanese sales. If you want further proof - look at the Xbox. Its dismal performance in Japan hasn't stopped it from being a moderate sales success.
Thanks for reminding me that we're all drones. I had forgotten how much having leisure time harmed my productivity.
As well as that, all the major game hardware manufacturers define "Europe" rather liberally. They also include the Middle East, most of Africa, Australia and New Zealand, and some of South America (perhaps all - can't remember). The potential size of the market is therefore rather huge. If we're limiting ourselves to just Europe (rather than the extra bits games companies add in) then the most recent total population figure I can find is 731,018,523.
This is wonderful news for fans of the Sony handheld,
You mean wonderful news for Sony, right? How great can it be for a Sony fan to hear this "news?"
and it certainly quiets many of the naysayers who have been pointing to the success of the DS sales compared to the PSP.
Well, up until Sept. 1 in the UK, domestic/non-imported sales for the DS over those of the PSP were infinite. If you were talking internationally, 200,000 additional PSP units sold thanks to the eagerly anticipated UK launch is a drop in the bucket so far.
And what else exactly were you hearing from the "naysayers?" I didn't hear any Nintendo fanboys claiming the UK wouldn't bust a nut over the PSP when it was finally released, after the almost one-year-long blueball session they've gone through relative to the rest of the world. All I heard was that, until that point, the DS had been the best hardware launch the UK had seen, along with the ubiquitous whining here and elsewhere from Europeans about being treated like third-class citizens by Sony. Well, here's your bowl of Sony dog food boys, you better come running because you look a little starved.
So, a translation of your post: "I know you Nintendo guys never said anything, but I feel oppressed by _something_, so neener neener neener just in case."
I am a UK citizen (could be worse)
I don't get why everyone is buying these with the two most huge problems.
1. The left button not being aligned with its underneath pressure pad thing.
2. The dead pixels. If all the flat panel manufactures have generally now sorted this out by now. Dead pixels are now very rare for new 17" 19" monitors. the psp must have the most crap quality components when balencing amount of dead pixels / overall pixels / units
now along with my history of Sony hardware dying well before i would have reasonably expected with no obvious hardware flaws, the psp's 2 fatal points nail the coffin shut as to my choice buying one, i'm amazed how many people fork out cash for such crappy designed hardware. Not sure if i feel pity for people who buy this junk
Look at Sony's own software shipment figures. Right now, the market for games goes US > Europe > Japan, and I assure you game developers care about this.
Slashdot is broken...
Parent moded flamebait and GP (a clear troll) model insightful??
What a droll troll.
Two tears in a bucket. Motherfuck it.
No personal discount on the PSP for Sony employees? Or sony really pays you little, you happen to be a musician with a new record deal?
My wife's sketchblog Blob[p]: Gastrono-me
I have both the PSP and the DS. The only good game for either playform is Super Mario 64 DS. Go figure.
blakespot
-- Heisenberg may have slept here.
iPod Hacks.com
I wonder why they always release things in Europe last when they sell more boxes here than in Japan. Its fracking annoying.
"Does this solidify Sony's position in the handheld market with a firm foot in the door?"
more like a firm foot to the balls...-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
This is MY galaxy...go find your OWN!
actually, Australia and New Zealand are often labeled as Asia too.
We never know where the hell we are...
Advanced users are users too!
When I was in local retail shop I noticed software from x-oom.com http://www-x-oom.com/. They have product called X-OOM Movies on PSP.
Thought I really don't see no reason to watch movies regulary on PSP, especially when you have to convert them to it... Watching regular shows and news would be a different beast. If PSP could download video podcast to it, then.. wou. I would buy it.
Survey research tool for commercial and scientific use
"NO! No! No! No!"
I'd like to run some other player on it so that I could watch my own..
"NO!"
O-okay, I-I guess I'll buy it then..
"Good boy! Let's have your money, NOW!"
Uh.. S-So could I play this fun solitaire that I have on my PC?
"NO! Begone pest but not before you've bought this EA MadFuckken 2006 Ultra Turbo!"
Preserve old classics: copy your collection onto all hard drives.
Have you SEEN our DS gameslist?
Once again, the UK gets shafted by Nintendo and 3rd party publishers and has to wait months to get the games which people in the US enjoy.
The DS ran away with the lead in the US because it had a damn good lineup of games (right now both Nintendogs and Advance Wars DS are selling strong). Here in the UK we haven't even had Meteos.
All we're enjoying is a lengthy break before the killer apps get here and I've got to say it doth royally suck. The PSP's launch titles in the US were better than the DS but in subsequent months the DS got its excellent games into circulation and started to pick up momentum.
What we're seeing in the UK is what happens when licensing and bureaucratic publishing houses delay the launch of games in Europe months after their release in the US. It's not normally noticeable for the companies concerned but at a time like this it's the games released soon after launch that are critical to a console's success.
I'm a mac user so I'm kind of used to being treated like a 2nd class citizen for gaming (except for games produced by ID and Blizzard) but if Nintendo would like to know why their arguably superior system with its stellar lineup in the US is getting pounded here, they might want to look at the utter disgrace that passes for cross-continental licensing and distribution.
(The author is currently sitting on his ass waiting for Advance Wars DS, Nintendogs, Meteos and a variety of other games already out in the US to be released in the UK)
...the kids need something to watch all the movies they download on.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
The success of PS2 in Europe is largely attributed to the UEFA Champions League Soccer competition, which is sponsored by Sony. For Europeans, the CL is like the Superbowl for Americans: the most celebrated sports event...right before, in between, and after each CL game there are big SONY commercials for PS2.
So PS2 is linked somehow with soccer; add to that the fact that PS2 has the best soccer video game (Konami's Winning Eleven or something), and you can see PS2 everywhere besides homes: in taverns, in coffee shops, everywhere where there is a TV in public display there is also a PS2 and Konami's soccer.
No, I don't think so.
http://www.walkingtaco.com
I feel bad for answering the flamebait, but I must.
Anyone can see: PSP looks ok, DS looks ok. PSP sticks to the formula for living room consoles, never tested on a portable, DS sticks to the tried and true portable formula. PSP is a gaming portable which can do PDA things, DS is a gaming portable with a touchscreen much like most PDAs. PSP is fat, not sexy, DS looks solid. For the PSP you need to buy a case to protect the screen, the DS has it naturally with its clamshell design. PSP lasts for 2 hou..LOW BATTERY, DS has at least 5 with backlight, up to 10 without. PSP games have long load times due to media, DS games have near 0 load times. PSP still uses console like control for FPSs, the horrible analog stick, DS uses the stylus for that in a way similar to mouse on the PC.
It's no doubt the graphics on the PSP are far superiour to the DS's, in screensize, resolution and power but the DS power is not too shabby either.
However, the CONTROLS for the DS are vastly superiour. How can you compare an analog stick with a complete touchscreen?
^_^
The PSP is more 'lickable' than DS: the promise of better graphics, movies everywhere, superior sound, hackable etc make it a better choice.
That's irrelevant though to the fact that DS games are more fun, simply because Nintendo is better at making games.
French newspaper "Le monde" published a story today that the PSP sold 250,000 so far, and that shops are restocking shelves several times a day.
--
Atlantis, smash hit puzzle game for mac & pc: http://www.funpause.com/
The size of the market and number of consoles sold has already been covered, but here's another free clue for you: not only does the EU produce more games than the USA, but the UK alone produces more games. So the drop in the bucket in game creation is the USA. _You_ are the folks which aren't too creative in the gaming arena.
Want to know some games that helped sell the USA-made XBox? KOTOR and Jade Empire, made by Bioware, a company from Canada. Fable, made by Lionhead, a company from the UK.
You know, here's some friendly advice: you're not even doing the USA any favour by displaying such massive ignorance. I'm sure most Americans are actually intelligent people. The problem is that what we from the rest of the world see is the "patriotic" ignorant rednecks, spouting such idiocies online.
I don't know what it is about the USA and retards spewing their mouth all over the Internet. As I've said, I assume there must be just as many percent retards as everywhere else. The difference that the USA has _loud_ retards. They just _have_ to post something online that isn't just offensive to the rest of the world, but is utterly stupid and uninformed too.
So here's the friendly advice: if you're that patriotic and proud of your country, stop making it look bad online. Read some actual information before spewing such idiocies on an open forum.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Sigh... I'll never understand why and how record sales of damn non-networked product should make me happy beyond the obvious fact that decent sales ensures support, which is almost guaranteed anyway by legal obligations and the size of Sony corp.
Fanboys! Sigh...
Well, if your job involves a fair amount of reading, as technical jobs do, then you could try doing some of that...
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
"So here's the friendly advice: if you're that patriotic and proud of your country, stop making it look bad online. "
I agree, because
(a) An AC on slashdot shapes world opinion
(b) your personal opinion is the most important thing that matters to the typical slashdotter.
Even the Dutch are laughing at you right now.
You can't consider the EU as a single market for games (not consoles, I'm only talking about games) because you simply can't sell a single product across the whole EU like you can across all the US or Japan.
The UK usually gets the US version localized by converting NTSC->PAL and some Cookie->Biscuit, Gasoline->Petrol language/spelling conversions. Simple stuff really. For the rest of Europe, you have to completely translate and localize a whole bunch of different versions:
Germany - Translate everything into German!
France - Translate everything into French!
Spain - Translate everything into Spanish!
Italy - Translate everything into Italian!
And those are just the next biggest four markets. Now you can try to use these five to market to the rest of the EU (given that many people speak one of them as a second language), but to truly tap into the whole potential of the EU you would also need to translate and localize into all the official languages: people are simply more likly to buy it if it is in their native language. That adds: Danish, Greek, Dutch, Portuguese, Finnish, Swedish, Czech, Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Hungarian, Maltese, Polish, Slovak and Slovene.
Keep in mind: all that translating is difficult, expensive, time consuming work, and given the different markets in different countries, the popularity of a given game might vary from hit to zilch, which presents a bigger risk in releasing a version for each country.
Alternatively, Europe-launch games could all be released in English ONLY, and things would be simplified immensely.
/Hurrah for American Hegemony!
//Up WAY to late
"Cheeze it!" - Bender
I'm amazed at these figures.
At the risk of being off topic, I have to point out that the conventional wisdom about the Game Cube is flat-out wrong. Many people will tell you that it's a race with PS2 and Xbox way out front and the Game Cube running a distant third. These figures show very clearly that the XB and GC are neck and neck while the PS2 is squashing them both.
No wonder Nintendo refuses to concede defeat. They may be, technically, last, but with 18 million units sold they're not exactly crushed in the market place, especially considering the the XB is almost certianly far more expensive to make and market.
Sorry to get off the PSP, but as December 2004 sales figures, these are pretty useless in that department. Lets compare the numbers in six months. DS may still beat the hell out of the PSP, but at least it will be closer to a fair fight.
TW
It's worth bearing in mind that most games outlets in the UK had been taking PSP preorders for 6 months or more, making the number of units sold a whole lot less impressive. Also, just about nowhere were selling unbundled PSPs, so the game sales figures are also less impressive - how many people buying a PSP ended up with a game they didn't actually want?
What?
I'm a European and I've never seen that game in my life. I've seen plenty of PS2s though. Oh, and I don't care about football either.
Against the grain
Indeed, and they were willing to milk this monopoly for all it's worth. If you compare the advances that took place in the handheld arena over the period of Nintendo's outright monopoly (which I'll be charitable and date from the end of the Gamegear period through to the announcement of the PSP), both in terms of games and hardware, they're absolutely pathetic. Even the GBA, which represented the biggest step forwards over this time, was a pretty minor advance compared with what should have been possible. Nintendo are the absolute masters at making people buy multiple versions of the same console, just to add functionality that should have been present in the original. Look at the GBA/SP debacle.
Nintendo get an easy ride on slashdot due to their "underdog" status. What people forget is that this underdog status is the result of ineptitude on their part, which caused them to get so effectively sidelined in the full-size console race, rather than any great moral basis. Nintendo have, over the course of the last 2 decades, engaged in pretty much every type of so-called "corporate thuggery" imaginable, from unethical exploitation of a monopoly, through to throwing FUD at competitors and a draconian attitude towards supposed violations of their IP rights.
Sony and Microsoft are no better in this sense, of course. But at least slashdotters don't generally try to claim that they are.
I bought a PSP last saturday. It is great for watching videos and surfing the internet (you can even vandalize Wikipedia with it), but there are still better games out for the DS.
Many games just need the magic of the touch screen and the high vertical resolution of the DS. That little nub the psp has is pathetic for controling stuff.
Also lexar makes crap memory sticks so avoid.
So I own two DSs and one PSP, Ill keep the PSP for media but someone will have to bring out more innovative games for PSP before itbecomes my primary gaming machine.
Do you play with your Willy?
Sure, the total size of the EU's GDP is comparable but what percent of that GDP is devoted to gaming? I'll bet it's nothing like Japan.
Nothing is like Japan. Nothing.
At last where video game are concerned. You think they save the EU for last cause it is their best market? Heck, this isn't even the EU, this is just the UK, right?
Or to put it differently: Do you think Sony and Nintendo are going to lend more weight to sales figures in Japan, USA or the EU?
I mod everyone down who says "I'll get modded down for this." I hate to disappoint.
Not a troll, just another ignorant schoolkid on Slashdot spouting off about something she/he know nothing about and helping the ignorant of the rest of world confirm their stereotypes about ignorant Americans.
You, Sirrah, are talking out of your arse, you know nothing about economics, geography, business and probabkly quiet a few other things.
No but, yeah but, no but...
Isn't that Tube and major stations only?
Bahhhahha, touchscreen for gaming... Did someone mention afterthought? oh, and anyone that only gets 2 hours out of their PSP's battery has a faulty unit or battery. Mine lasts 6 hours (3.5 with the Wifi on).
It's not a 'supposed need'; as far as I'm aware, products sold in the EU have to have foreign translations on them, hence why electrical goods will literally have huge booklets covering every EU language.
I could be wrong though.
The European Union has the same size economy as the US. Here you go. [wikipedia.org] It sure does not look "a drop in the bucket". You only prove your ignorance of both geo-political matters and economy when you make such sweeping assertions.
...which is pointless fact, since these release numbers are for the the UK alone.
And the masses cried out, "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0!"
Sony has always done pretty well in Europe because very few American/Japanese games actually MAKE it to Europe, with Sony having the biggest chunk.
Now where there is something Europe likes, it buys it up, but the fact is there are very few titles actually IN Europe to make it almost a moot point. Nintendo in particular does not release games in Europe, the DS there has 1/4th the library that it does here and in Japan, which is why its kicking the PSPs ass across the board here, but being kicked there. Sony on the otherhand released as much as they could to save face from there horrable US and Japan sales.
The fact remains though that Europe alone wont be enough for Sony to justify keeping the PSP running in the long term.
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
Your thinking of International Superstar Soccer, which although being popular, is also matched by FIFA 2005.
Niether of which can be seen everywhere.
"However, the CONTROLS for the DS are vastly superiour. How can you compare an analog stick with a complete touchscreen?"
I can compare them quite easily, and actually like the gamepad controls more.
E.g., because I don't need to switch focus all the time between the main screen and a gimmick touch-screen to play a game, I can just look at and concentrate on the main screen. I find it helps with suspension of disbelief a _lot_.
E.g., I also find holding a gamepad to be more comfortable than Nintendo's design.
E.g., best of all: I don't have to put up with games that were never designed for a stylus to start with, but added some retarded "draw a symbol now quick" gimmick, just for gimmick's sake. (And presumably also because some marketroid at Nintendo told them to.)
The fact is, the games I play don't need a stylus (nor a mouse.) Car racing games, for example, work with a thumbstick far better than with a second touch-screen gimmick. Jump-and-run games (a la Castlevania), ditto, just need directions and a jump button. (Adding some "quick, switch your eyes to the other screen and draw some retarded symbol" gimmick is just that: a gimmick I could easily do without. Happily too.)
Then again, I don't play FPS much, and definitely not on a portable. Dunno, maybe DS's design is any good for those. I wouldn't know or care. For everything else, no thanks, I'll take a normal gamepad instead.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I saw your number and didn't like them, so i went and found some more recent stats. The ratios remain about the same. The I went to look at some other metrics...
The population was the one that jumped out at me.
EU : 450,000,000
USA : 300,000,000
Japan : 125,000,000
You look at the population vs number of units sold and a very different story is told. Those numbers aren't hard and fast for alot of reason but even if common sense didn't kick in, it seems very likely that gaming is far more a part of Japan & USA life than the EU. Maybe I just like to think that the EU gets out more than we of the USA.
A MUCH better number then units sold would be games sold. Thats where the real money off of gaming is made and that is what is going to direct future decision sby the various game companies.
I mod everyone down who says "I'll get modded down for this." I hate to disappoint.
According to FIFA, sometimes NZ is in asia, sometimes in south america and sometimes in the carribean (!) :-/
a) the companies are Japanese, the product / os is built in Japanese therefore primary release will always be for the JP market if only because of lead time.
... The EU is dead last for everything.
b) the primary localisation would be into English, so the next obvious markets to target would be the UK and US.
c) the UK is part of the EU, and common market restrictions mean the product must be localised for french, german and english on release.
Therefore
**** lying is wrong even for sleeping dogs
you can see PS2 everywhere besides homes: in taverns, in coffee shops, everywhere where there is a TV in public display there is also a PS2 and Konami's soccer
You're making this up aren't you?
I'm from the UK, and I've never even heard of this game, let alone seen it anywhere in public. Apart from in the windows of shops that sell consoles, I don't even see any PS2's in public.
I seriously doubt 'Winning Eleven' has anything to do with the success of the PS2 in Europe. The most popular football games are EA's FIFA series, but I reckon the GTA series is a much more serious force behind PS2 sales.
Are you talking about the soccer world cup? (Australia going to asia)
My Transformation Website
Kindle Books http://www.catprog.org/rev
Interactive CYOA http://www.catprog.org/st
The person I was replying to was talking about Europe. Kindly follow a discussion before replying to it.
Mother is the best bet and don't let Satan draw you too fast.
You may be surprised about why the DS only appears to dominate in Japan (and IMHO the lead won't last).
It's cheap.
I'm in Japan, and I had my girlfriend over last Sunday night - she bought a friend of hers (2 JGirls in one room!) who had just bought a DS for her little brother.
She told me thought the DS better value for money.
Until I showed her mine. The screen, the movies, the web browser. She was completely stunned as she hadn't realized it had all that stuff.
In fact, until that point she hadn't actually handled one (just looked at the box and the price), and was absolutely knocked out by the build quality (on that front the DS really is rubbish).
So I then hooked up a pair of PC speakers, propped the tiny little thing up on the coffee table (not normal in Japan but my dining table serves mostly as my desk), and the three of us watched Pirates of the Carribean together.
Great night.
Sorry, but the PSP knocks the DS "for six"
Actually, here on slashdot, most people will still try to claim that Nintendo finished second, usually citing mythical, massive Japanese sales figures to support this. All the figures in the GP do is confirm what most people have known for a long time; the PS2 has a massive lead, which has eroded slightly (but not to any degree that should worry Sony) over the last 18 months or so of the cycle. The X-Box was second and the Gamecube third, with a million and some spare change between them (closer to 2 million now actually - the X-Box has benefitted from a relatively strong bunch of late-cycle releases).
When Nintendo are criticised for poor performance, it's generally over the performance of the Gamecube and N64 relative to the NES and SNES, with a huge drop in both market share and actual sales figures since then. For a former industry leader (don't buy the argument that Nintendo don't *want* big sales, as it's a blatant falsehood) to be beaten into third by an absolute newcomer to the market - and a newcomer who has made a lot of mistakes and bad calls at that - must be a rank humiliation. Try to imagine how the US Democratic party (or the UK Conservative party) would feel if they were beaten into 3rd place by the Libertarians (or the LibDems in the UK) at the next election and you've got some idea of the real picture.
I have a Sony 14" Tv from 1991 that is still going strong.
I had it just to use my Amiga 500, now it is used for gamecube.
And just for the record I hate Sony for killing the Saturn and Dreamcast and for high priced incompatable hardware and lack of imaginative games.
ERR 411[Max number of witty sigs reached]
Actually, this device WANTS more than games. There's a lot of potential here for all kinds of third party/community apps. Granted, text input is by way of an onscreen "keyboard" which is more like a phone's pad than anything, but with features like WiFi and a browser there are all kinds of things that could be done from the community if Sony would release to the public a (legal, approved) SDK for it.
A couple of things could be done to improve the unit itself, number one being the addition of a larger (in GB, not dimension) hard drive, making some of the buttons more sturdy feeling (R1 and L1 both feel like they could fall right out of the unit) and some other minor things.
R(k)
It appears to me that as much as you are portraying yourself as a helpless moth drawn towards the light of the troll it is you who is the troll. A firefly perhaps...
"PSP sticks to the formula..."
"DS sticks to the tried and true portable formula"
hmmm... You're not a sub-editor for a newspaper owned by Newscorp are you? If not send this post in as a resume. It's awesome.
The PSP lasts for 2 hours eh? Not sure how you make that out. I don't doubt the DS lasts longer, any disc spinning mechanism is going to drain power nice and fast. However I have played a PSP game for over 4 hours straight and not had to recharge.
As for analog stick vs stylus..
My partners son had a DS, I played it. It was good, a solid gaming experience.. and he had the movie player accessory.. passable video capability.. the most annoying thing? holding the unit and pressing buttons in one hand while all the other one did was frig around with the stylus on one screen. The second most annoying... trying to look at two screens. It wasn't for me.
Turns out it wasn't for him either. He traded it in against a new PSP. One person, but a nice counterpoint to your comment.
I like the analog stick, I hate the touchscreen. I don't compare them. the DS control may be superior in your eyes, but not in mine.
"vastly superior"?
Ha-ha. A good jest sir.
I tried to find the PSP on Sony's Dutch website. That didn't even have a link or anything about it on the homepage. So I clicked Playstation. From there I could click on the PSP weblink, and had to wait forever for the website to load,just to be able to click my language of choice. And then I again had to wait forever for the website to load (I have a 1 Mb/s broadband connection).
:-)
When will those stupid marketing people understand that I want information, not a shitload of crappy graphics and forever load times? I only wanted to know what the resolution of the PSP is, because it looks to me this might be a perfect replacement for a Palm or even a real laptop. But I gave up when I was at 50% download, so I guess I'll never know...
-- Cheers!
Half-wrong, half-right.
If you're selling a product which requires instructions for use, such as an electrical appliance, a self-assembly furniture unit or, yes, a game, you do have to provide instructions for use in that country's language, for the most part.
However, with games etc, this has always been taken to mean that you need to provide a native-language instructions booklet - or at least the safety/how-to-load instructions. You do not need to translate the actual game; this is essentially an "art" product and if you're going to ban untranslated games, you've also got to ban untranslated English-language novels, plays etc. I've done translation work in the past and even if you do a really thorough job, a single decently-bilingual person should be able to translate the manual for a modern game in well under a week. In most cases, I suspect it could be done in a day.
The "translation" delays that sometimes affect games are largely due to developers/publishers wanting to translate all in-game text. This is made even more significant when the game features a large amount of voicing, which most modern games do. Given the delays that this causes, the fact that most Europeans in the normal gaming demographic can now understand English and the generally appalling quality of translated voice-overs compared to the originals, a lot of European gamers would rather just have an English-language-only release.
By Konami's soccer he means Pro-Evolution Soccer or, in Japan, Winning Eleven.
Most people I know prefer it to FIFA. Yeah I'm in Europe.
I think those figures have to be considered alongside this information.
Firstly the 450M people is for the entire EU at end 2004, 75M joined the eurozone in May 2004 as part of the EU enlargement programme - Poland Czech Republic, etc.
The 5 largest markets are United Kingdom, Germany,
France, Italy & Spain. Roughly population of those markets is 300M. Placing them on a par with USA
The USA has a higher disposal income, GDP per head and PPP than europe (generally)
Combine those factors and I would tend to agree with the other replies above, market saturation levels are different between the USA and Europe.
Data from Eurostat - a European Union Agency
http://epp.eurostat.cec.eu.int/portal/page?_pagei
status symbol.
I heard this from a helpful EB employee.
Bring the thing back, and say it has battery problems. A: They'll be required to return it, as battery problems are a valid reason to exchange a PSP, and B: It takes too bloody long to test, so nobody tests them.
I don't think anyone is happy selling a substandard screen, especially not with the hype around how super the screen is. Just tell the people at the store that the battery doesn't hold a charge, and that you'd like another one. Try to get one you can test first "just to make sure." Used PSP's are great for this, if the store has any.
The ______ Agenda
Splendid!
Carry on, citizen.
Not when you realize that this is the number of units sold to retailers, not customers.
Where on earth did you get that population figure? It is insanely wrong. Maybe it is the EU + Russian Federation + former soviet states...
The EU is about 450m people.
as far as I'm aware, products sold in the EU have to have foreign translations on them
You are right. The 10 page user-manual that comes with a game (the only part that I've ever seen translated, and then ignored) would probably cost one translator one days work at most. So I guess that explains the 6 month wait.
Might be different for countries like France or Germany. AFAIK ze Germans are crazy and translate/dub literally everything they consume. There's nothing like watching Diamonds are forever and wondering who the real bad guy is, as everyone talk in with funny "dialect" anyway.
(Please don't take that last part as flamebait. I fully comprehend german and think it's an alright language, if not a bit rigid :)
Not Buzzword 2.0 compliant. Please speak english.
No, no, no, lets leave it as a flame.
My partner is german and she equally agrees that it is a horrible, disgusting, ugly language, and is reluctant to even teach me it! (And comments that it's a bit like the average German public really - digusting!)
Hah!
Bahhhahha, touchscreen for gaming... Did someone mention afterthought?
Yea, it's so stupid to have a fully analog, point and drag and drop interface. It's not like anyone uses something like that. FFS, 99.999999% of the applications and games on the PC use a mouse.
Have you even played Meteos? Surely you haven't, otherwise u'd understand how good the touchscreen is. Try controlling the blocks with a d-pad or analog stick and you'll see how slow and inaccurate you are. Try playing an RTS without the mouse.
With almost all console games i've played, and i've played a lot, performing selections and positioning with the d-pad or analog controls are usually cumbersome and annoying. I'd MUCH rather to point and click with the stylus or just use it as a touchpad on the bottom screen while the game is on the top. Or how about this, the game screen is on the top, while the bottom shows the map. The stylus is then used to move the view around "looking up/down/left/right" analogly while some sort of arrow-y control is used for running forwards/backwards and strafing left or right. OH WAIT, that's how any FPS works on the PC, except the mouse is replaced by the stylus/touchpad. And that's how it'll work with Metroid Prime: Hunters.
Or. You don't have enough buttons for things you want on the interface? Stick them as virtual buttons on the bottom screen with the main action on the top. Sound stupid? "games don't need that much buttons...", then think about the pictochat. The bottom area is a virtual keyboard. Or the bomberman game, there are many powerups you can use, and you choose and use them with the bottom screen with big virtual buttons so you don't need a stylus.
^_^
The GameCube was in second place until some time in 2004.
"Dave, I stand still--the conclusions jump to me!" - Bill McNeal, NewsRadio
1) Yes, the DS looks cheaper, primarily because it is almost 50% cheaper
2) Watching movies on the PSP is the best part, but the movies cost more than DVD's, there is no rental market for them, and you can't copy them making UMD movies a poor bargain. Oh, there aren't many of them, either. Maybe if sony drops the price of UMD movies to $7, they'll catch on.
3) The screen is too small to watch unless you're 3 away. Perhaps in Japan this is a normal size of an apartment, and you've given us a really cute story that you think proves your point.
4) The games really are crap. I own a PSP, and there's not a game that's worth the $40-50 they want. Ridge Racer? Please! That comes out for every console. Hard to get excited about the umpteeth version.
Look the PSP is fine, but I own one and it sits in a drawer. I have no use for it. Its hype. Smoke and mirrors. I feel for it, but its still hype.
Therefore ... The EU is dead last for everything.
You think that's decent beer you're drinking ?
Those are the standard conceptions, yes, and without checking I'd guess that most people would agree with you.
However, the reality is slightly different. From that link, Europe has gotten a lot more games than North America. There are several reasons for this. The main three are, firstly, that games released in North America do tend to get released in Europe eventually, with very few exceptions, so most of the lineups will be the same. Secondly, in Europe we tend to get the occasional game that the North American audience just aren't interested in - soccer games, for example, or games based on other sports that aren't quite so popular in the US.
The final major reason is that following various court cases against Nintendo and Sega quite a while ago, content "approval" (SCEA-style) isn't legal. Once a publisher has a publishing license in Europe, SCEE can't do much stop them from releasing a game - certainly not as much as SCEA can. This means it's easier to release a game in Europe - you can, for example, just pick up a Japanese license for very little, spend a bit on translation, and have yourself a PAL game the wasn't originally intended for release outside of Japan. There are even various budget labels that specialise in this.
It's for all of Europe, not just the EU, so yes, it does include Russia, as well as the European countries that are not a part of the EU. I don't see why we'd limit it to the EU, since that's not what the games industry does, or what "Europe" means.
If they don't follow up with more interesting games then the foot may be planted firmly in the mouth. I bought a PSP a couple of weeks ago and so far I'm pretty happy with it playing Lumines, Wipeout Pure, and tooling around with the web browser, but I really want to see some really interesting stuff before the year is out. What I'd really like to see in the near term is Flash support for the browser which would suddenly make thousands of web games potentially playable on the PSP. I wonder if Sony is actually afraid of that?
In any case, it looks like the UK launch has gone pretty well for Sony. But they'd better not rest because quite honestly, the DS has the better stable of games right now.
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
Well I have been often teased as such by my friends. I live in Canada and mostly, I tend to buy Sony because they have this Macish (making up words here hope it make sense) style to them. Very slick, very intiutive.
So, of course being a geek at heart, I went to buy a handheld. And after a bit of deliberation between DS and PSP, I was blown away by the PSP graphics and bought it. This is in the early days of PSP, when it was still hot off the press and very few people actually knew anything constructing about it and much about it was speculations.
So why am I feeling ripped off and let down:
1) since release of PSP, I have Hotshot Golf (ps1 caliber game at best.. but fun to play for a bit), Untold Legend (yet another ps1 caliber game completely linear, idiotically simple), Need for Speed (this existed in the arcade from my 2nd year university days) and Dynesty Warriors (ps2 game, choppy as hell, most frustrating).
So where are the GAMES??? I think there is 3 or 4 game available that I couldn't get myself to spend the money on. I think I have wasted enough on the crap I already bought. Why is a Sony game device released with out any RPG??? Hello, Finaly Fantasy?? NO I don't want to be a fucken ghost and walk around town.
2) What's with the crippled hardware??? WHY the hell would Sony do this?? Well I know why, because they want to code up the UMD for their god aweful movies that they are releasing all over the world with their fancy DRM. Anyone with more than 1 brain cell would realize that these movies are low quality in graphics and in sound and COSTS more than an actual DVD. And why make this cheap excuses for DVDs so bloody expensive?? DRM cost?? Why bother?? Who in their right mind will rip these crappy videos when they can do they can do ACTUAL DVDs?? Why region code in the first place?? it's a bloody hand held... Some corporate weenie needs to be smacked them hung from his/her finger nails (or made to live his/her mother-in-law for an year).
3) Where are my bloody games?? I think I said that already.. Why is every bloody update designed to cripple my PSP even more??
I know DRM is here to stay and it's the corporate mantra for salvation. I am just feeling tired of geting ripped off no apparent reason and paying good money for it (other than corporate greed and exclusivness).
I long for some new games...
--- -a- "I'd love to change the world, but it'd be easier if the universe exposed its API."
"...a lot of European gamers would rather just have an English-language-only release."
:)
I guess it depends on the country. In my experience when visiting Spain a year and a half ago, most of them don't like anything that isn't in spanish, even when the user speaks english. I guess it's what they're used to since all movies are dubbed in spanish there (here in Venezuela only kid movies are dubbed, the rest come in original language with subtitles).
Back then the Terminator 3 game was coming out, and one of the big selling points in the TV ads was that the voice actor for the terminator was the same that does Schwarzenegger's voice in the movie's dubs..
It seems logical to me that with more users of a particular platform, more developers will come into the market and produce more games for that platform. Not to mention more accessories, more competition that may result in prices being brought down, etc.
If you have a Sony PSP, then you'd probably be happy about this.
Personally, I don't have a handheld game system, but if I do get one it will probably be a Game Boy Advance SP, mostly so I can play all of the old nintendo games that have been released on it and relive my youth.
Just wait until Nintendogs is released in the UK and causes massive DS sales. I have a feeling the naysayers will continue to say "nay."
"Sufferin' succotash."
This all ignores a real problem- that sources (such as News Corp's rag) had been. for a long while, actively whoring the psp and deriding the ds. In one cares there was a "comparison" when the psp wasn't out in *any* market.
Unsurprisingly, I believe the psp got a 9 or somesuch.
Then again, this IS the land of Edge....
I'm quite sure ONE dead pixel would be enough for Nintendo to replace it, but does anyone actually know?
The EU is a more complicated market though. In the USA they speak English, in Japan they speak Japanese, in the EU there are at least a dozen languages. A lot of the EU don't speak the languages that games are usually translated into, especially the old Soviet countries.
The GameCube problem, as I understand it, is in software sales, not hardware sales. The Xbox and PS2 "attach rate" is supposedly significantly higher than the GC since GC tends to be a secondary console for most people.
In other words, you have an Xbox or PS2 and a GC, but you only buy first-party Nintendo games for your GC. Everything else (Splinter Cell, Madden, FPS, platformer, racer) gets bought on PS2 or Xbox, so the third-party developers are happier with those consoles (plus having dual analog sticks and online).
Ok first of all, why so many people bother to comment: "yeah this sets Sony with a door in the balls/thumbs/head etc) yeah I get the joke but unfortunately it's wrong, you are talking about SONY remember? the guys who made the PS2 and the coming PS3? a foot in the door? these guys have their entire body apendeages, relatives and dead corpses stucked in the door!
Second, the PSP isnt going anywhere, this is SONY we are talking about (not SEGA) even if they had released a handheld as bad as the N-gage (which is definetily not the case) they would still figure out a way to market it and make a buck. You think their handheld project is going under just because is selling a percenteage less than its direct competitor? (even NOKIA is still pulling out NGAGE's as we speak)
Third: Yes Nintendo DS is beating the PSP, why? for starters because its a whole lot CHEAPER. The PSP is as expensive as a home console so is _not logical_ to believe is going to get MORE sales as a system 1/3 of the price. Also the DS has a lot more titles yes, unfortunately most of them were ripped off directly from the GBA how many DS games are actually DS titles and not GBA ports ? 5? maybe 10?
Fourth: you are forgetting a small detail, this is just the first generation of the PSP. Sony eventually will DROP the PSP price, eventually more developers (and users) will adopt the PSP and more and BETTER GAMES will be released for it (GTA, GOD OF WAR, GT4, and TEKKEN are coming to it for starters), We havent seen nothing guys, this party is just getting started.
BTW Half of the industry is completely astounded by Sony not pushing the PSP further THIS year, but you can be sure Sony has a card under their sleave for it. (most analysts predict sony will show their PSP hand next year during the PS3 release )
p.s. Why are you guys still complaining about "dead pixels"? I heard those can be fixed by simply playing a small video that "wakes up" the dead pixels. the video is around the web, google it.
Go ahead MOD my day!
More opinions here
"I find it funny how Sony are trying to soften the problem by calling them 'stuck pixels' rather than dead. Almost like you could give 'em a little nudge and they'd start working again!"
They're not dead, they're... stunned. Those PSP pixels stun easily. Give 'et a rest and it will come right back! Remarkable things, those PSP pixels. Beautiful colors!
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
This is actually a pretty good explanation. There are quite a few GC owners among my daughter's friends, but they all seem to have a PS2 as well. They mostly use the GC for Super Smash Brothers with groups of friends and they use the PS2 for fighting games and games that they play by themselves.
I do think the group market is something Nintendo does especially well. The games are fun and low stress, but still competitive. I expect that while the other two consoles increasingly go online and in the direction of one console per player, Nintendo will continue to make games and consoles that emphasise groups getting together in the living or rec rooms. It may not make them #1 in the market, but it'll at least keep them relevant and respected.
TW
Language barrier, mostly. They can cover two huge segments of the market (Japan and North America) with English and Japanese, while they have to do French, German, Italian, etc. when they go to Europe.
It's sad, but it's the diversity of Europe's culture that keeps game companies from launching over there.
There are also laws in parts of North America (province of Quebec) that requires of game companies that if they have a French version for France, then they must also release a French version in Quebec, which increases the cost even more if PAL/NTSC is involved (I don't think it applies to DS and PSP, but it sure does for PS2 and GameCube).
People are buying the PSP so they can hack emulators on it, not play UMD games and movies. :P
Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
Just for fun, let's get some numbers involved.
Let's go with your 300m figure for "EU", just to be conservative.
Esitmated population:
EU : 300,000,000
USA : 300,000,000
Japan : 125,000,000
Units sold per person:
PS2
0.15576 Japan
0.10953 USA
0.09687 Europe
XB
0.0136 Japan
0.044 USA
0.01667 Europe
GC
0.03024 Japan
0.0337 USA
0.01377 Europe
GBA
0.12384 Japan
0.1094 USA
0.05813 Europe
DS
0.01176 Japan
0.00453 USA
0.0001 Europe
I'm too lazy to type an analysis of the numbers, though.
Have you even played Meteos? Surely you haven't, otherwise u'd understand how good the touchscreen is. Try controlling the blocks with a d-pad or analog stick and you'll see how slow and inaccurate you are.
To be fair, Meteos is a shameless Tetris Attack knockoff but with the swapping turned vertical. I would argue that Tetris Attack is actually a superior game, if not THE superior game. The d-pad works great for that game.
Meteos is a lot of fun and introduces a bit more frantic action but the combination of the speed, the tiny blocks, and the clumsy stylus tend to make every round end up the same way -- frantically scratching down every column hoping to accidentally launch enough blocks to survive.
For me, it kills the endless replay value that Tetris Attack has because, no matter what, skill will go out the window at some point. (unless you're playing on the little schoolgirl levels.)
Obviously, MHO, YMMV, etc.
I've been playing GBA games on my DS recently. I wish they supported the DS's sleep mode. Until the native game catalog fills out, that's my number one DS gripe.
The reason why many games are delayed going into (E) from (U) or (J) is because to sell in most (or all) countries in (E) it must first be translated to 5 different languages, which takes time.
Nintendo had a monopoly because they were the best. I remember the NeoGeo Pocket, a big flop. Then the N-GAGE came along, big fuss, success for a bit, now sunk without a trace. I have been told that things like this have been happening throughout the game boy's history. Unless there's something very special about Sony's offering - and I have no reason to believe there is - they will crumble and die too. Nintendo *owns* the handheld market.
I am trolling
A MUCH better number then units sold would be games sold. Thats where the real money off of gaming is made and that is what is going to direct future decision sby the various game companies.
True, given the larger population of the EU, the console makers might be able to really move boxes (and more importantly, their games) if they adjusted their pricing accordingly. That is probably the main reason that Sony and Microsoft sell their consoles at a loss - loss leaders to prime the game revenue pump.I hope sony is not proud of any more consoles sold than the DS. Because the DS is not the primary handheld of Nintendo. And because psp have probably a 4 years lifespam its gonna get trashed when the new GameBoy come into the game.
//WR
ZOMG WHO CRES ABOUT TEH UK!??!?!111
/kidding....
MOR LIK...YUKCY ROLFOAMALFMAO
I'm not scared of anonymous cowards.
If I'm not getting paid for sitting in the bus, I'm not going to do any work on the bus.
No wonder Nintendo refuses to concede defeat.
Their GBA sales numbers are on par with the PS2. Even without adding in the Gamecube and DS they are beating the snot out of Microsoft.
If I had absolutely no knowledge of the specific games that had come out for two different consoles, but knew that one had 10 games available and one had 100 then I would almost certainly go for the one with 100. But this is not the case with the PSP.
It most certainly is. If you buy a Nintendo DS at 130 USD and a portable DVD player at 120 USD (prices checked today at Wal-Mart), you get a selection of over 10 times more compatible games (GBA and Nintendo DS platforms) and possibly over 20 times more compatible Hollywood movies (DVD Video) than you'd get for the PSP at 250 USD.
What I'd really like to see in the near term is Flash support for the browser which would suddenly make thousands of web games potentially playable on the PSP. I wonder if Sony is actually afraid of that?
Macromedia Flash technology looks more proprietary than Java technology. Can the PSP run Java applets?
not only is loading not bad on the PSP
Then why were both Midnight Club and Need For Speed for PSP so poorly engineered? I've read one report of two minutes from power switch to gameplay and another report of 1:10 to load a track that takes 2:30 to play. And if you don't like any of the genres that have well-made PSP titles, then all the time you spend waiting for a genre to become represented on the PSP is in a sense just as bad as loading time.
I owned a PSP (for Lumines)
Other people don't have to. The luminous game is now on GBA.
So I sold my PSP. The DS I'll never sell.
Did you try buying a GBA flash card with the money that you got, so that you can play GBA homebrew?
MPEG-4 videos played from Memory Stick Duo media are decoded at half the PSP's native resolution and stretched to fill the screen. This 240x136 pixel playback is not much better than the 240x160 pixels you get on a GBA Movie Player, and the GBA MP uses cheaper CompactFlash media to boot.
http://techdirt.com/articles/20050907/1311206_F.sh tml
I only wanted to know what the resolution of the PSP is, because it looks to me this might be a perfect replacement for a Palm or even a real laptop.
The screen has 480x272 pixels, but the system as sold at retail in September 2005 runs firmware 1.51 or later, which is not compatible with anything except those programs published or otherwise specifically authorized by Sony, so you're not going to be able to take advantage of anything like the Windows, Mac, or Linux freeware scene.
People are buying the PSP so they can hack emulators on it
All PSPs sold new this month have version 1.51 or newer firmware, which doesn't work with emulators because Sony hasn't signed any emulators and doesn't appear to intend to do so. Because the downgrader isn't stable yet, the only way to get a 1.50 PSP is to buy a used Japanese or North American unit.
The "other" popular handheld for both new commercial games and classic system emulation is Nintendo DS. All versions except the "iQue DS" version (sold only in China) and the one in a red chassis (sold only in Japan) work with the most popular hack.
Wow, there are still people that aren't familiar with ripping DVD's?
You're right that there are still people that aren't familiar with an operation performed by software that was pulled from the market because it was ruled illegal. Expect similar judicial behavior in other countries that have adopted the WIPO Copyright Directive. Heck, in the UK and Australia, there hasn't even been a court decision clearly upholding the right to use a VCR or DVR to time-shift copyrighted television programs.
Besides, a lot of people can afford $25 at a time for each UMD Video title more easily than $100 at a time for a 1 GB Memory Stick PRO Duo. Affordability of an individual "blade" in the Gillette business model is the same thing that coaxes people into buying a $50 inkjet printer rather than a $500 color laser printer.
That is probably the best reason for why the GC widely receives less support than the PS2 or Xbox. But another major issue related to that is that Nintendo still charges higher royalties than the other two. They've actually lowered their royalty rate since the GC's launch, but third parties will still make less money on a GC title than on a PS2 or Xbox title (assuming retail price is the same, which 99% of the time is the case).
There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion. -- Francis Bacon
A small benefit is that companies do sometimes tweak, fix, or even add content to the later releases of the games. Here in the US we generally get a little of that (especially fixes), but it seems pretty common from what I've seen for Europe to get higher difficulty levels (which is partially a cultural thing) and/or extra bonus content added.
An obvious example is DOA3, where Europe clearly got the best playing and most balanced version of the game. The US release frankly sucks in comparison, lacking a large amount of moves, whole important gameplay features, a sweet prerendered intro movie, AI improvements, and lots of extra costumes (though this at least was available on bonus discs in the US). Many Konami games like MGS2 (IIRC higher difficulty levels and some special modes) and ZOE2 (the same, along with some really great extra bonus missions) end up with large amounts of bonus content for the Euro release. So there are small perks to the late release at least.
Part of this is because the Japanese market seems to be a lot more forgiving of buggy, poorly optimized, or even plain unfinished console games. They are also a lot more willing to then later buy special "International" versions of the games they already own.
There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion. -- Francis Bacon
The pixels aren't a problem. Why? Because they aren't dead. Stuck pixels are white and they can be fixed by a program. It does indeed work. Dead ones are dead, black, and can't be fixed. Besides, a few little dots never ruined a game. You can only see them in the menu or on a black screen. The battery life is also surprisingly good. Mine lasts about 6 hours or so. If it gets low I plug it in to recharge. You never have to change the batteries(though I still do enjoy my GBA). I honestly thought when I first saw it that it was a waste of money. Then my fiance got it and I tried his. I found it to be really enjoyable. The screen itself is fantastic(probably why I never put much thought into the DS). I don't care for small screens and the PSP has a brilliant one. The fact I can play my favorite games on it too helps(like Chrono Trigger). It's definitely not for a smaller child, but for the older demographic it's great. Not everyone is expected to like it but I failure it is not.
just got a psp and i'm lodin it up with cool stuff. i'm luvin all the free wallpaper out there. here's some of the sites i'm using -- can u add more?? (1) http://www.plasmadesign.co.uk/PSP.htm (2) http://www.sumopop.com/ (3) http://www.pspwallpapers.com/
I have a question. What do you mean by: The idea that Japan is the major market for games consoles is quite wrong. You need only look at the figures that pglee has provided to see that - for every console EU sales eventually exceed Japanese sales. If you want further proof - look at the Xbox. Its dismal performance in Japan hasn't stopped it from being a moderate sales success. Isnt almost all game console is made by japan? Except for Xbox? Even Nokia is from japan. What exactly do you mean?