New Media Experience Coming to PSP

The Guardian Gamesblog discusses the announcement that a Metal Gear Solid digital comic is in the works for the PSP. There's also going to be a title called 'The Silent Hill Experience', which will be a sort of guide to the series. From the post: "Designed to offer a comprehensive guide to all things Silent Hill, The Silent Hill Experience combines a number of media formats to give a compelling overview of the horror series. Using an intuitive 3D interface, users can view all-new Silent Hill digital interactive comics, listen to music from the four games in the series, and watch exclusive video content. The Silent Hill Experience also features an interview with Christophe Gans, the Director of the highly anticipated Silent Hill movie, starring Radha Mitchell and Sean Bean." Nice that they're finally doing something defining with the console.

Comments

PSP vs. Portable DVD Player

[cybereal]

Granted, the PSP can play games, but who really wants to pay $250 for the one or two good games it has to offer?

On the other hand, for almost $100 less money you can have this: http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=6970 469&type=product&productCategoryId=pcmcat139000500 18&id=1099386329954

That gives you access to your EXISTING dvd collection, rather than paying more money for lower quality versions of movies you may very well already have, that will not play on ANY other device besides the PSP. Furthermore, get yourself a DVD burner and burn 4.7GB (or 8.5gb if you shell the cash for DL) worth of MP3's to listen to on the go.

Granted, the PSP is smaller and looks "sexier" but it also only has a, what, 4.5" screen? The dvd player I cite (and there are others, especially in the car-only segment, you can get a dual screen setup for $250) has a 7" tft.

Battery time is also directly comparable, not due to portable dvd players having good battery life, but instead due to the PSP having terrible battery life.

Clearly there are pros and cons to both, but, this post claiming "Nice that they're finally doing something defining with the console" makes me realize just how sad the PSP's showing really is.

Nothing in the post today can't be done on a DVD. I guess if you really want to shell out $249.99 msrp for vendor media lockin on movies, a smaller screen, and access to *WOW* digital comics *laugh*, then by all means, buy a PSP.

p.s. I didn't even bother comparing digital media players due to price, but, the price vs. feature set, with emphasis on size comparison with the PSP, also makes these devices a much better deal if you're looking at the PSP with movie watching in mind.

HI-MD

[JohnnyLocust]

Sony were fools to opt for UMD instead of the HI-MD format. http://www.minidisc.org/hi-md_faq.html

Even though they are .8 GB smaller than the UMD, their rewriteability would have made the PSP a truly revolutionary media device. HI-MD audio players have incredibly long battery life for a non-solid state player. Using the h.264 video format, they could still have released very high quality movies. If they thought the UMD was going to prevent piracy, well, we all know how well that turned out.