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Sony Struggles To Define the PSP
Brian Crecente has a piece over on the Rocky Mountain site talking about Sony's struggle to make the PSP stand out. The failure of the UMD format, its de-emphasis as a media player, and the lackluster stable of games leaves PSP owners wondering exactly what to use it for. From the article: "While digital media is a key focus for Sony Computer Entertainment right now, the company is also working to expand other elements of the portable as well. In November, the PlayStation 3 will launch with built in PSP support. While [PSP Marketing Manager John] Koller wouldn't discuss specifics, he did say that the PlayStation Portable will be a 'remote control device' for the next-gen console. He says more details about that connectivity will be coming out in the coming months, perhaps at the Tokyo Game Show next month."
I bought mine at launch, have had it listed on Craigs List for almost 6 months and cant get rid of the thing so I guess my definition would be "paperweight".
The PSP is a brilliant piece of hardware, but 99% of the games suck, im not stupid enough to buy my movies over again and its too freakin big for an mp3 player, so most of the time it sits on the desk waiting for some game to come out that I might actually enjoy. Its pretty sad when the best game on the platform is the first one that was launched with it (Lumines). Oh well, at least there is Lumines 2 on the way.
It's a handheld games console, only too big to fit in your pocket, too expensive to be treated as a cheap Nintendo console with its huge back catalogue, with a large, easily scratchable screen, playing media that Sony has decided not to continue with, from a company who's pissed people off with shoddy, easily bypassable spyware which increases the risk of hackers easily taking control of your PC.
I'll take 10!
It's just a cool pocket movie viewer at this time.
Where were you when the voynix came?
How is that possible if it doesn't even have 100 games? Possibly you mean that 95% of all PSP games suck 100%, and the last one sucks 80%? :-D
I own a PSP. I use it for Puzzle Block Party, a game that uses about a fifth of its blurry battery-eating screen for actual gameplay (the rest is used for weird animated comic characters). I wish they made it for the PSP, then I could, uhm, try to sell my PSP on eBay or something.
They should offer it as one of the few handhelds that let you make your own games and share them with friends. Hell, I dunno, offer a simplified development kit for the price of a game with a way to import your own art and music. Allow people to create their own games on the damn thing. Then, for maybe a bit more money, offer an advanced user package that's basically a simplified SDK.
If they wouldn't try so damn hard to break homebrew apps, I bet people might buy more games. I know for a fact that before the ability to downgrade firmware, people wouldn't buy games because it required an update first.
Open the thing up (except the UMD format -- I'll give them that much to keep), let us make our own games without implementing roadblocks to homebrew, and the thing will sell more.
Oh, and actually release some damn games already.
"Apparently so, but suppose you throw a coin enough times. Suppose one day, it lands on its edge."
"A big issue for us has been the (Digital Rights Management) and how we can secure that content to the Memory Stick," Koller said. "The studios and the labels don't want their content floating around."
After you pay for it once, you should be able to float it around wherever you want to let it float. Grrrrr
...a $200 controller. I guess that fits the pricing scheme of a $600 console.
Compared to the $130 'controllers' that'll work with the Wii, I can see why they want to try and push it as an option.
;)
Of course, I love my DS Lite for all other sorts of reasons.
I'd say a portable NES, Genesis, SNES, and GBA library is worth it.
The PSP, while a nice idea, failed because it tried to be all things to all people.
I have an mp3 player for music, a pda for movies, and (now) a ds for portable gaming. The UMD format failed hardcore, and the game catalog is lackluster.
The main problem with sony these days is that they lack focus. Brand name loyalty aside, the PS3 would share a similar fate. The mere fact that it is a PlayStation will have every male 18-35 lining up to buy.
Anyone else think the comments just weren't rendering right before they turned off ABP and saw ads?
Outside of greed and lack of vision, there's no reason the PSP and mylo should be separate products. They are both WiFi capable, both have a small form factor, and both have a strong software development platform for them. If the PSP had been made with the slide-out keyboard (or had even been given a USB host capability so an external keyboard could be hooked up) the major hardware difference that matters would have been gone or greatly reduced. If they had allowed the strong home-brew community to keep functioning instead of constantly making things harder for homebrew developers with each firmware update, most of the software to do all of this would have been written for them.
It's probably plans to release mylo that prompted the crackdown on homebrew games and apps for the PSP. Now that there's little of the PSP's original promise left fulfilled, it's a struggling product. Now they want those of us who laid out $250 for the PSP to repeat the cycle with mylo at $350. I say tough shit, Sony. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
I still have a working Betamax VCR, still have a Sony Walkman somewhere, and regularly use my Sony CD boombox from the late 1980s when I'm in the kitchen or the back yard. The Walkman and the CD boombox they got right -- they were interoperable and I could play homebrewed content on them. At least the Betamax I could get blanks for and it would take homebrewed content. I never bought a PS or PS2 but I'd been considering a PS3 or maybe a PS2 for now. At least with the PS2 they paid lip service to homebrew. It was never the homebrew system the Atari 2600 or the Sega Dreamcast were (and heck, still are). Sony says the PS3 will be able to replace a PC. If they think my desktop will be locked in to their vicious vendor lock-in and Sony's planned upgrade cycle, they are sorely mistaken. I'm not dropping that kind of money on another closed hunk of Sony crap.
There will be no mylo and no PS3 in my home unless Sony fixes their "dumb consumer" thinking. I want my purchases to serve my needs and wants, not just theirs. I'll not buy another Sony product until they fix themselves. Right now, Sony is broken and so are all of their products.
By mentioning Nintendo only once as a competitor (in the last paragraph) and not mentioning the DS at all, it shows to me that both the reporter and Sony don't understand what the problem with the PSP is: people want a handheld game system and Nintendo has delivered on that front far better than Sony has... and worrying about Apple and Microsoft before figuring out how to compete against the DS will only hurt Sony even more.
And as for the PSP's non-gaming functionalities... You could cut UMD movie prices in half for all I care and there will still be an overflowing stack of unsold discs at the videogame store... and no ammount of add-on peripherals like GPS receivers will save the PSP, since the same devices can be easily developed for any other handheld.
Is it so hard to abide by the rule of Keep It Simple Stupid?
"...today consumers have been conditioned to think of beer when they see a bullfrog..."
I've been bashing Sony with the best of them lately based on their DRM and PS3 pricing fiascos, and their arrogant attitude. That said, I bought a PSP at launch and actually get a lot of use out of it.
I will start out by saying I have the 1.5 firmware and refuse to upgrade. There is a wealth of homebrew emulation and other software out there that really makes this a pretty cool handheld platform. As far as playing newer games that require firmware upgrades, there is an easy and brilliant way around it thanks to the PSP hacking community.
The PSP is great for travel. I could care less about the failure of UMDs. The format was doomed from the start. It is relatively painless to convert existing DVDs to the PSP's format and load them onto a memory stick. I brought a movie with me to watch on the plane on my last business trip, and it was a very enjoyable experience. I also had a few albums loaded onto the same stick to listen to while I was on the road.
The screen is beautiful and great for movies.
Yes, the ergonomics suck for a handheld, it's not perfect.
As far as commercial games go, there are actually enough great games on it to make it a worthwhile platform including tight baseball, some good racers, Tekken, and a decent RPG to name a few. That situation should continue to improve.
I'm not happy with Sony as a company, but I'm pretty happy with my hacked PSP. I'm not sure why so many people are down on the platform; it's got the processing power of close to a PS2 under the hood.
It's Mario!
I don't use a hacked (1.5) PSP anymore though I did play around with it and homebrew (as well as emulators and ROMs). I got bored and updated it to 2.8 though. Game wise it was never that good for me..I only own about 4-5 games for it which is low low amount. I use it more for a anime player and displaying pictures/manga as well as .txt files I need to read.
The only thing I really regret about upgrading the firmware was that I forgot there were some homebrew programs that were good for viewing pictures. >.
"I thought what I'd do was I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes" ~ Laughing Man - GITS:SAC
Come on guys, the PSP is clearly a computer joystick!
Information wants a fueled airplane waiting at the hangar and no one gets hurt.
El Tonerino
I think people wouldn't be as pissed about the PSP if it weren't for the UMD format being hamstrung by Sony. Since Sony has acknowledged that the UMD format has failed in the video arena, I think it's time to open up the UMD format to allow for video, audio, and jpg playback only. I know Sony is paranoid about piracy of it's games, (and it should be), so open up UMD to sell UMD writer drives, blank media, and accessories to support the writable format. Make them RW, and you have a great economic engine. MiniDisc only survived as long as it did because it was writable. Perhaps Sony could learn it's lesson again and make lemonade out of dog poop.
I thought the de-facto open handheld was the GP2X http://www.gp2x.com/.
It comes with linux onboard. You can download devkits for windows and linux using sdl and c/c++, with OpenGL optional. When you are done with your game, you copy it over using secure digital cards, or usb thumb drives. Homebrew development is actively encouraged by official contests, with cash prizes for the best entries.
Do you know what else sounded cool?
Gamecube -- GBA connectivity.
I think we all know how that turned out.
"A big issue for us has been the (Digital Rights Management) and how we can secure that content to the Memory Stick," Koller said. "The studios and the labels don't want their content floating around."
Huh, that's funny, it turns out I don't want a portable player that media cannot float easily onto. And the content is already floating, so all they've done is make it hard for the mass market to add media to the device - the ones that might think about buying the product.
The day that Sony Games rebels against the draconian wishes of the Sony Media division is the day the PSP will see success.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Please don't remind me. I dropped the 50 bucks for Four Swords. Too easy as a single player game, and the multiplayer is damn near impossible to find anyone to play with. Especially with better multiplayer games.
Cynical Idealist
Yeah, and that's a real shame, too. The few times I've found enough people to play with have been a blast. It's an awesome game.
Looking for a good RPG. Not an "action" (I.e. diablo clone) RPG. More along the lines of the old chrono trigger or FFVII. I have agonized over buying a PSP for several months. But the complete lack of RPG game selection is what has held me back from buying a PSP........Is the DS any better?
I am not a number. I am a free man!
eh. I don't know of really good DS RPGs. However, it does play the GBA ones.
Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time was pretty good, but I don't know if it has enough angst for most Squeenix RPG fans. I can't think of any others, but I'm not really a video game RPG fan anyway.
This poo is cold.
To my mind I don't think a products positioning (in terms of marketing) is really a problem - the problem is that all around, because of the aforementioned inability for just anyone to load media on the device, people can't find a good use for the PSP. As a games player it's OK but there are few compelling games. If people could have also easily added media of thier own then perhaps that would have been enough extra beyond what the DS offers that it would have been compelling to a wider market.
I agree with you that the DS has focus, on that part I agree it's the reason for thier success. I just wanted to note that I think product development focus is much more important than marketing focus, if a device is good for something people will generally find out even without marketing messages.
I think the strategy to use the PSP as an extension of the PS3 is a pretty good one (Isn't nintendo doing the same with the Wii and the DS?) but the sucess of this strategy comes down to games. Here I am sure Nintendo will have more compelling games that make use of the integration, but Sony could still have a pretty good setup if they get enough (or just the right) third parties interested.
Personally I think the "killer app" for PSP to PS3 integration would be sports games, where you can use the PSP to secretly control plays. The PS2 has always been a big platform for people who like sports games.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Squirrel, please!
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
OMG NINTEDO IS tEH SUXXOR!!!! SoNy 4 LIFE!! I CANt WAiT To SpEnD $600 4 GAME SeQUELS WiF PURDIER GRAFIX!!
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
No it doesn't. It sounds like a crock. Who's gonna want to pause their fabulous entertainment centre surround-sound HD movie and send it to their PSP to watch it in lo-res Shit-o-vision whilst they go to the toilet or mow the lawn (cause you know, you just can't go one second without consuming media content these days).
As for downloading music and games, you can do that already. There are a wide range of Nike adverts you can spew into your PSP at various WiFi hotspots. If they extend this to something useful like games or music, then great, but it has nothing to do with a PS3. You'll just end up with pathetic boondoggles like they have in Outrun Coast2Coast, where you connect your PSP to 'unlock' new cars.
I actually got some minor use out of the PSP format, for throwaway entertainment like Ghostbusters or Serenity that I didn't already own in another format. I was halfway through Zelda when I accidentally upgraded my firmware to play some game, and it broke. Strange that the most compelling content for the PSP was provided by some high school hackers, and was used to play twenty year-old games. The major disappointment for me was the total lack of online play. It was hilarious that Sony pushed the crappy browser and other online functionality like the RSS reader, then completely ignored actual online gameplay. After reading one last review that said "great game, you will enjoy it with up to four friends in ad-hoc mode," I sold the PSP to pick up a DS. Now I'm happily playing Tetris and Metroid online with the most elegant matching system I've ever seen, and enjoying innovative games like Trauma Center offline.
Linux: Free if your time is worthless.
I'm pretty happy with my hacked PSP. I'm not sure why so many people are down on the platform
It might have something to do with the number of PSP owners who have the wherewithal and the confidence to hack their PSPs without turning them into $200 bricks. If, instead of your PSP, you had a brand new one right off the rack with newer firmware and didn't know how to revert it, would you be able to get the use out of it you're getting out of the one you actually have?
I'm in the same position. Had the good luck to buy a 1.5 and never upgraded (what does it say for a product when everybody wants to downgrade the firmware and each upgrade further cripples it?). While the screen and audio makes for excellent memory stick movies I still barely use it, due to the huge form factor, fragility, bad battery life, and horrific memory stick costs.
On the other hand I've just upgraded to a DS Lite from my original DS Phat. I use it all the time especially in conjunction with the GBA micro. Both take the Play Yan cartridge providing excellent video and mp3 support. When on the run I use the micro for it's small size, but when I'm sitting down I use the DS Lite for the better screen and battery life.
The worst part of Sony's strategy is that they are actively supressing the two practical applications of the PSP memory stick movies and homebrew, while desparately looking for some practical application for the unit.
The PSP does have a potential killer app. Wireless downloadable movies. Exploit the WiFi function to allow users to download movies to a large memory stick with a firmware mod. Agressively market the service (in conjunction with recharge cables) at airports, Starbucks and train stations. Unfortunately the present leadership of Sony would never risk something as audacious as this, which is why Sony is cratering.
The PSP is wirelessly compatible with the PS3. The PSP is already compatible with the PS2 [Metal Gear Subsistence/ Socom...] It's not rumored, it has actually been done on the current generation PS2, and demonstrated on the PS3. I don't doubt it will happen, but the Wii compatiblity and function has still yet to be seen. So whats your point?
Huh? The PSP was and still is the underdog in the handheld market. Nintendo had a backcatalog of thousands of GBA games that were playable on the DS the day it was released. The PSP was released months after the DS in most territories I can think of. Even in Japan, it followed the DS release by a week or two IIRC. The PSP came from nowhere and ate up somewhere between ~30-40% marketshare from Nintendo. Not bad.
Sony providing solid competition for Nintendo is bringing out the best from both companies. There were alot of good games for GBA, but most of them were short and horrible, the other half were just mediocre. Many of the 'top' GBA games were games that would get crucified if they were released on PSP today. Both companies are bringing out their major franchises. In one year the DS put out more 'original' Mario games than the GBA has to this day. If left to nintendo, there would never be a portable version of a 'proper' GTA, fighting game, or Metal Gear title, so I say own both portables and be happy.
I have both the PSP and the DS. The PSP has been relegated for use as an MP3/Video/Media/etc player. I NEVER play psp games on it anymore, i dont browse the net with it. The Nintendo DS is my gaming portable. BOth have great uses when im international flights, and business trips, and i dont regret buying the PSP, but it definitely lacks in the game department.
Zonk you're such a fanboy :P
Lumines
Hot Shots Golf
Siphon Filter
SOCOM
GTA
Wipeout Pure
Katamari
and now Tekken! How can you claim this is "lackluster"?
...then all it takes is for one enterprising company out there to produce a half decent game and they'll be raking in money. In fact, all they have to do is port a half decent game from another platform. Or maybe I'm just naïve in assuming that the market has any kind of efficiency like this.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
Sony really doesn't pay attention to past failures. Atari tried to do this very same thing with the Jaguar and Lynx. You could use the Lynx to control the Jaguar via the ComLynx port waaaay back in '93. Back then, no one was really willing to pay for a $100 portable to go with a $250 game system, so there were no games developed for that feature (supposedly, Aliens vs Predator was going to include this functionality).
I don't really see how Sony, with it's terribly high priced PS3 and PSP with few games, would ever wish to make the same mistake that Atari did.
Fifty watts per channel, baby cakes.
Reguardless, it is true. Most technology should not be convergent.
Cons:
- The PSP is not a very good MP3 player because of its limited capacity.
- The PSP is not a very good movie player because of its size. However, if you don't believe me, I am considering selling a copy of Ghost In The Shell for UMD format on Ebay sometime in the near future. I recent rented the DVD version of GITS which has bonus features the UMD version did not. So much for using that extra capacity, Sony.
- The PSP is not a very good web browser. I hate to admit it but as far as web browsing outside the house is concerned, forgettaboutit!!! While the browser does have some good qualities such as being able to check news and weather from your home WIFI network, taking it to school, the coffee shop, or any other public WIFI area that requires HTTPS protocol is futile. And don't even bother with passwords or messaging. Also, so much for playing Flash movies or games. How there can be only 1 MB max memory for Flash but unlimited memory for gaming is beyond me.
- The people who designed the PSP only though of their programmers and not the hackers who could do better. On one hand, I could create programs for this device. On the other hand, I don't know jack about MIPS processors (I only made a couple weak programs in assembly. Everything else is C++ or PHP) that an I don't want to lose the ability to play games. (Death Jr. is awesome!)
- The people who designed the PSP only thought of the LCD and Addicted gamers not the casual gamers. I like video games. They are a joy to play sometimes after having a crappy day. But I don't buy every game under the sun nor do I play game 12 hours non-stop. Games are suppost to be fun, in my opinion. Sony's marketing staff only appeased to the Lowest Common Denominator (hence so many crappy games rather than re-releases of good games that can be ported to the PSP) and to the Addicted Gamers. There are certainly hundreds of good PS! and PS2 games that could be ported to the PSP if the evil demons who work at Sony's marketing department had thought about the classic gamers as well as the moderate gamers.
- LocationFree Player is a useless waste of space. Why does everything have to be a TV or TV-player? Since the programming TV offers fails to improve with the technology, the LocationFree Player is of no use to a person like me. That and the LocationFree Player device is not sold at any of the electronics retailers. If I want to watch TV, I'll go home and watch something AND ONLY if there is something good on. Anyone who buys an big screen HDTV to watch sitcoms or reality TV needs to DIAF. There is no reason to be bombarded with TV or Advertising everywhere you go. TV does not belong on my telephone, computer, or gaming console.
Pros:The Rapture is NOT an exit strategy.
I'm losing all respect for Slashdot's gaming section. When I come to Slashdot's game section I expect the latest industry news on all game platforms presented in an objective manner. Instead this section has become Zonk's personal anti Sony flame board. The PSP is a great gaming system. It seems lately the hot thing to do is jump on the anti Sony bandwagon with claims that are completely unfounded. The biggest being that their are no good games. If you say there are no good games that tells me you haven't looked lately or you don't know what your talking about.
Tekken: Dark Resurrection ign.com rating 9.2
Syphon Filter: Dark Mirror - 9.3
NCAA Football 07 - 8.3
Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories - 9.0
Burnout Legends - 8.5
Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth - 8.5
Daxter - 9.0
MLB 06: The Show - 8.3
Field Commander - 8.4
Ultimate Block Party - 8.0
And these are just a few of the top games and it covers all gaming categories. If you look at the line up of games scheduled for release of the next 3-4 months you'll see the PSP has a lot of very good games about to be released. The PSP library isn't as big as the DS's which I also own but considering the DS also plays gameboy advance games which has been out much longer how can it be. People need to stop this mindless bashing of one system or another.
I'm not happy with Sony as a company, but I'm pretty happy with my hacked PSP.
Which is why Sony is not happy with you!
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
I mean. Nintendo is clearly making a game machine and that fits their goal quite nicely. Microsoft wanted to make a console with a little extra via Marketplace downloads and connectivity with USB devices and Windows and it works nicely. There's extra stuff on the horizon, like apparently movie downloads and such, but it's not there yet, so Microsoft isn't rushing anything. (Well, the launch of the console was rushed a bit but everything is fine now.) On the other hand, Sony tried to create a platform for browsing, playing games, movies, music and a new disk based media.
Nintendo and MS kept it simple. Sony tried to bite off more than they could chew.
Maybe UMD would not have been such a massive failure if the movies were not so massively overpriced. There is no way people are going to pay more for a UMD movie than a DVD. The UMD version should be at most cost half the price of the DVD version.
When you can do stuff with your PSP like this: http://www.engadget.com/2006/01/09/psp-controlled- honda-civic/ or http://www.engadget.com/2006/08/09/use-your-psp-as -a-pc-joystick/ why is everybody complaining about it?
Brilliant piece of hardware.
e nt_4941966.htm I saw some features that would have been really nice to see in PSP (and are likely to see in some future PSP device). And that bodes well for the future.
Agreed. I bought mine shortly after launch after a 5 minute demo by someone down at my local. It was an easy sell, but I was curious to see how the platform would grow, having watched the lifespan of the PlayStation and the PS2 up to that point.
99% of the games suck
I have to disagree here. I regularly play and enjoy Everyone's Golf (The old Hot Shot franchise), MVP, Burnout, Namco's Portable Island Resort, World Tour Soccer 2, FIFA World Cup 2006, SOCOM and Puzzle Bobble. I am checking out a couple of interesting RPGs as well and looking forward to Ridge Racer 2 when it does come out. There are other titles that I've played and enjoyed and many that I haven't seen (maybe they all suck, I don't know). But if it is only 1 percent that don't suck, that seems to be working out fine for me.
im not stupid enough to buy my movies over again
Nor am I. I did buy one UMD movie when I got my PSP, just for the novelty. I didn't think I would likely be picking up another one, and imagined that if that was the prevailing attitude it would not be living long as a portable movie format. But the UMD's success or failure in the movie arena is irrelevant to the console as a gaming device. UMD movie cessation just doesn't mean anything for games. Period.
Before I picked up my PSP, however, I noticed a program called PSPWare. It let me easily drag and drop movies to be converted and transferred to my PSP. It also let me sync photos from my iPhoto library and MP3s from my iTunes library if I wanted. In addition to this it automagically backed up my save games off my memory sticks when I synced so I always have a backup of every save. It seemed like 15 dollars well spent and it was. I wanted to watch video on my PSP, but like you I wasn't going to be repurchasing content. I use my PSP numerous times per week as PSP and it rocks for that as well.
and its too freakin big for an mp3 player
Well, maybe for your pocket, but as a docked MP3 player it's just the right size. I didn't buy it to replace my iPod. The MP3 playback is a nice extra. The fact that you can set it up in the kitchen in a dock and stream audio to it wirelessly is pretty damn neat. A nice portable AirPort Express audio player.
And then there's emulation. That was one of the reasons I did pick it up and have not been upset with all. Retro gaming rocks my world and it is a superb platform for that, whether Sony likes it or not.
After seeing the photos of Mylo the other day http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2006-08/09/cont
[UID-HeinzIntel]
I upgraded my firmware to 2.8, and they've gotten sane about video naming and directories. With the web browser you can download iPod compatible video into a "Videos" directory, then watch it, then delete it, without ever touching a PC. Good for video blogs, Rocketboom, Macbreak, etc.
I'm glad i didn't buy a $300.00 'remote control device' for the PS3!
Probably the worst video system ever ;)
PSP sucks
DS sucks
Zonk is a cheap Nintendo fanboy. Check his stories, check his comments. It's a real pity he's on the /. editorial team - the other editors at least attempt to write from a neutral viewpoint.
Personally I think the PSP is a great portable gaming system. I also think the DS is a great portable gaming system (although I don't own one). Can't we all just get along?
"You heard the man, Tubbs.. get undressed."
Dude.... Whoever can afford a PS3, PSP and a 1080TV, can probably afford to have LCD screens all over their house (including their bathroom and kitchen).
As a college student in dorm housing, I can say that me and the people who live in my hall can't get enough of Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicals or Four Swords. It turns out that a couple people already had GBAs and the ones who didn't went out and got some (you can get the older, non-SP kind for about $20 used). Those two games quickly replaced Halo as the game of choice unless there's a whole slew of people wanting to play something.
That being said, though, I can see how finding people to play with you would be a big impediment in just about anyplace other than a college dorm.
This device rules. If you are a handheld fan this thing is 5 years out before anyone expected. Get a 4 Gig card and do movies, pics, videos, games! no device does as much as this one box. UMD could use some help, but for MPEG4's on the run or home videos to play with.. come on this thing is the gadget to have! (Until MS puts out a XBOX portable) 1-10 Scale Ineternet 6.4 UMD 5.3 Photos 7.2 Videos 8.0 MOvies via MPEG4 9.3 MP3 Player 7.2
OMG CONSOLES IS tEH SUXXOR!!!! PC GAMIN 4 LIFE!! I CANt WAiT To SpEnD $0 oN PiR4T3D G4MES WiF tEH BEST GRAFIX oF AlL!!
Well then instead of using it as a rear-view mirror, they could use it for dashboard-type instrument cluster displays. That would be fairly realistic, since you have to remove your eyes from the windshield to view them in reality (unless you have a HUD).
Instead of the common (but fake) driving displays, where the dashboard is magically visible at the bottom of the driver's field of vision, perfectly in focus and clear, make the TV picture nothing but the view out the window, and then put the speedometer/tach/shift-indicator on the controller.
You could even do stuff like have the controller display blink colors, so that you'd catch it in your peripheral vision, just like you'd notice an instrument panel light in a car or plane.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
OMG PC GAMIN IStEH SUXXOR!!! BOARD GAMIN 4 LIFE!! I CANt WAiT To SpEnd $30 oN G4MES tO plAY iN tEH BA$EmEnT!! StAY oUT MOM!! YuO aRE s0 LaME LOL!!
That is only if you buy the premuim version, standard does not have WiFi.
Shouldn't that be PIMP, not John? Last I checked, sales folks were pimps.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
I see. That's a shame.
1) There are a million and one usb wifi adapters on the market. Wifi is one area that is easily upgradable on the standard. You can also purchase your own adapter for less than $70 [using the list price for the xbox 360 as a marker]
2) You will also be able to use a straight USB connection as well. Depending on the type of game interactivity. [ps2 games already have this functionality]
3) If the PS3 has media center capabilities, it can obviously connect with other devices on the same network; if you have a wireless router on your network already to use with the PSP, the PS3 would see it [without an additional wifi connector] just as it would any other device on the LAN.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Instead this section has become Zonk's personal anti Sony flame board.
I'm with you in that. There are more objetive posts on Microsoft Windows Vista than in PSP and PS3 together.
My city: Barcelona.
"It is relatively painless to convert existing DVDs to the PSP's format and load them onto a memory stick."
I've found this to be particularly painFUL. I've actually never gone DVD -> PSP mostly because PSP Video 9 (the only software whose videos my PSP seems willing to play) can't go straight from a DVD. I realize I probably have to rip/decrypt VOBs to my HDD or something and then encode those through PSP Video 9, but that doesn't seem painless to me.
Do you have an elegant, 1-step solution for doing this? I don't mind waiting for a video encode, but I do mind it requiring a lot of my attention.
Help!
When I think Sony I think rootkit. When I thing Sony I think denial of responsibility. When I think Sony, I wish it would go bankrupt quickly.
Sony isn't as bad as MS, but that is faint praise indeed.
OTOH, their rootkit *did* prove that ALL of the anti-virus companies are untrustworthy. I'm quite glad I no longer depend upon them. Apparently they deserve their rough treatment at the hands of MS. If Sony hadn't revealed them for the villians that they were I might feel sorry for them as MS drove them into extinction.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Subject says it all... Sony screwed the pooch yet again by completely slamming the doors shut on any efforts to tinker with the PSP by 3rd parties, and requires users to use their propietary memory and disc formats to do anything at all with it. Bottom line - Sony suffers, early adopters suffer, and nobody wins. Brilliant strategy Sony, keep it up and maybe, just maybe, we'll finally have an American electronics company again!!! ;-)
"What is Internet Explorer 7? Are you saying we can't access the normal internet?" - I love tech support. Really.
How I use it: In flight entertainment. It's amazing what a flight attendant stopper it is.
Ingredients:
Options:
DVD backups (VOB files) that you save to another file server.
Converting FLV videos from YouTube or Google (a bit too much effort for the resulting crappy quality).
Basically, I take PSPVideo9, add a line to its XML configuration file to recognize a DVR-MS file (I have a Media Center), and then pick about 6 hours of Colbert Reports and Daily Show's I've missed in the past week or so. Anything with a DirectShow filter installed can be converted by PSPVideo9... it just takes an extra line of XML to recognize the file extension.
This process takes a while, so I start it the night before my trip...
In the morning, I copy the files to my Memory Stick during my shower (once a month, whether I need it or not). This can take some time depending on your card reader speed.
I then laugh my ass off on the plane all the way across country. You can do this with a DVD backup program and PSPVideo9 as well. A 30 minute TV program is about 60MB and a 2 hour movies chops down to less than 300MB. If you have a 16:9 aspect ratio movie, it fills up the screen as the director intended. If you have a 4:3 show, just zoom the PSP screen and it will fill it (you lose 10% off the top and bottom, but it isn't stretched out).
Now, here's the next part... there are 100's of ways to skin this cat, but here is how I did it...
Get TV programs remotely (extra credit):
So, on your remote computer:
I'd like to do the RSS route... that would be cool.
Everyone I've let use my PSP to watch video (even iPod users) are blown away with the quality of the playback.
Battery life for memory-stick based operations is *great*. I use 1 bar out of 3 watching movies or TV for 2 hours. iPod / iTunes video does work well.
Be sure to pick up a combination USB and PSP cable so you can charge your PSP and another USB device as well off 1 port.
Drawbacks and gripes:
1 GB Mem sticks are a small. 4GB will be great. Those can be had for $150 or so now.
You can't take a HUGE library of media with you (like a 60GB iPod)... which is fine for TV for me
File format for video has to be MP4... way lame, but you have to chop it anyway.
Volume for playing video back isn't great - it needs to get boosted during conversion
Playing audio through FM tuners is NOT good... too quiet for most cars with the road noise
But, I think it is a really nice piece of hardware... I dan't play many games, but the ones I have, I enjoy. I don't play a lot of other games on other platforms either, so I don't have a lot to compare it to...
TTFN
Forget that I run a DS podcast for a minute ... I'm not interesting in a verbal bashfest. What I AM interested in doing is helping people understand why the PSP was doomed from the get go.
... why do we WANT to take games with us? To fill in the gaps of time we have free during our regular day, since most of us have jobs, families and responsibilities. Now, assuming that the people WITHOUT lives are sitting in their mother's basement, with their Xbox blazing and an RJ45 plug up their asses - they are obviously not the target audience for portable gaming.
In fact, it is so blatently obvious, I can't figure out why someone didn't figure this out LONG before the project ever got greenlit.
Portable gaming. What is it? It is gaming you TAKE WITH YOU. And
Portable gaming is for "filler-gaming" - filling in free time; commuting on the bus, waiting for the movie to start, sitting at the doctor's office, throwing down on the toilet - you get the idea. Twitch gaming is another name for portable gaming, really.
Now, let's look at the PSP, designed and content fed in the EXACT opposite manner in which it should be.
1) Poor battery life. There is a reason that the B&W crappy as hell looking Gameboy kicked the crap of the Atari Lynx; it ran 10x longer on a third the batteries. Forget that the Lynx had a near perfect port of Road Blasters, Joust, Xybots and other great games. If you can only play them for 3 hours on 6xAA batteries, you lose the 'handheld war'. Nintendo smartly build the capabilities of their handhelds to ensure maximum on-the-go time.
2) Sponsoring a non-condusive, over-priced, fragile closed format; UMD. Every time I see the term "UMD", I instantly think "WTF?". They can cost up to double the price of DVDs (you know, the movies you ALREADY HAVE in you collection). They don't hold as much, you can't write to them, the mechanical power required to spin a disc (IN A PORTABLE NO LESS) makes no sense, and the list pretty much goes on and on from there. I say non-condusive because MOVIES violate the concept of a portable gaming device (in so many ways it isn't even funny). Twitch gamers have 15-30 minutes to game (above mentioned commuting, waiting in lines, etc) - a 90 minute content block makes no sense. The LEAST that Sony should have done was declare the UMD format for twitch style content - 22 minute sitcoms and goofy MTV reality shows (seemingly their target audience anwyay). Sell episodes of Friends, American Idol, and Simpsons. Make it HELLA affordable - for God Sake's, Google is about to offer this content for FREE with basic advertising support. I shouldn't be paying $29 for 3 episodes of Survivor. Let's go ahead and invoke the 6+ minute load time video while we're here. I can be playing Mario Kart before the first boot screen of half the PSP games I've seen. Console kiddies are used to god unforsaken load times (been there - hey, Beachhead II, Commodore 64, tape version, 22 minutes to load). When I'm on the go - I want it NOW.
3) Portable gaming ain't console gaming. Look, man. Maybe you have 5 hours to tromp through a dungeon every day - I don't. Most of the people that do portable gaming don't. That's why they HAVE portable gaming, dammit - because console gaming doesn't fit their lifestyles. Why do you think there are 500+ 'portable pocket sudoku' games on the walls of Target, but strangely no stand alone pocket version of Final Fantasy? People can play a game of Sudoku in 10 minutes; you aren't even through the first goddamn CUT SCENE in FF in the 10 minutes. I'm willing to put up with a HELLUVA lot at home when gaming. I'm NOT willing to put up with it when I'm trying to block out some screaming kid at the clinic with a little Electroplankton time.
4) Lack of innovation. Great, you can play GTA on the go. Been there, done that. In fact, looking at the list of PSP games (old, new, and forthcoming) I'm seeing basically the same thing I've seen on consoles for the past couple ye
Seriously why is Microsoft bringing out the Argo? The biggest problem with the system is the base thing that we only know what it's trying to be. But seriously, how likely is it that Microsoft is going to bring out a product that will rival Apple.
It's the same here. Sony needed big games and even when they got Konami to give them solid snake what did they end up with? Metal gear acid? Not the blockbuster they needed. I don't fault Konami, why give Sony's new system a completely unique game that would work on the PS2, give them something unique for their game system that might be more portable.
The biggest problem comes in that I look at my DS and then look at a PSP. I pay more for the system, more for the games? Have to buy memory sticks? The cost of the system isn't 300 to 150 it's more like 350 to 150 + 20 bucks more per game.
Now if the GBA was the best Nintendo gave us, then yes the PSP would rock it's socks, but the DS has a touch screen, and dual screens. It might not be perfect for all games, but it certainly is far better than what the PSP brought to the table (larger memory space and multimedia, which if people really wanted, was available for the DS in import format). It has yet to get the developer buy in that it needs, and it's mostly getting games from people who would never make a DS game in the first place.
And then again the DS constantly gets Nintendo games, Sony doesn't make first party games (at least not to the length nintendo does).
Sony's going to have a long hard 5 years coming up. The PS3 is going to stumble at best, and fail out right at worse. The PSP is not going anywhere and just becoming controversal, the music industry isn't picking up. But they do still have good electronics at least.
If everyone was able to easily transfer movies to mem sticks, play homebrew software, as well as play the official titles with ease, then they would be flying off the shelves.
Fact is, a select few who have the will and knowledge to hack (enable the features that should have been enabled in the first place) are the only ones itching to pay $200 for one, and that demographic is small. Sony's PSP is failing because they are not giving the customer what he or she wants. Simple.
Two things:
1) Market IS growing (We went from a house with no portables to a DS Phat (Sis) PSP (Bro) and DS Lite (myself)), but it's growing in Ninty's favor.
2) Nintendo is burning into the DS Lite with a vengeance because it knows it's weaker in the main console crunch, and hence is burying itself into its library in hopes that having the largest library will keep it in control AND to make itself the name in portables, the way Apple is the name of the Mp3 business these days.
I'm not sure if you'd call it elegant, but there are quite a few commercial DVD to PSP converters that will do the ripping/encoding within the one application (just google psp dvd converter and you will get a ton of companies selling similiar products , some with free trials).
If you want to keep it free, I think you will have to use DVD decrypter to rip the DVD, but it really shouldn't be that bad once you configure DVD decrypter properly.
The PSP does have a USB port, since I use it everyday I can assure you it works great. It's just not a type A / type B. That's kind of moot, however since you could make an adapter if you so wished. The hard part is getting more than one game to use your device without Sony changing the firmware. =)
I didn't see that anywhere in the article. Oh well - the bashing continues....
No, really, they don't. The majority of people buying PSPs and DSs don't give a shit about home brew. In fact, I bet most have never even heard of the term. Yes yes, I know *you* care, and I know a significant percentage of the Slashdot population cares (as evidenced by your "Insightful" rating), but both you and the rest of us geeky tech folks are very much in the minority, here.
You know what people care about?
1) Cost
2) Games
3) Image
That's it. If they can get a portable that doesn't cost a lot, has a decent (preferably varied, to cover more demographics) game library, and makes them look cool, they'll buy it. And guess what? That pretty well describes the DS, which is why it's so successful.
Thats nice, I have to go pay another $50+ for a Wifi adapter if I ever need it compared to out of the box Wifi on the Wii for half the price of the standard system.
Level 5 makes excellent RPGs
http://psp.ign.com/articles/719/719661p1.html
Square continues the FFVII universe
http://psp.ign.com/objects/711/711340.html
Another great remake of a Square classic
http://www.gamestats.com/objects/788/788783/
Dunno, Pac Man Vs. gets regular play at my place when people come over. Crystal Chronicles took quite a bit of work to get set up, but was still a lot of fun.
I think the next generation will work a lot better in this regard. Wireless will really add a lot to the appeal, for both the Wii/DS and PS3/PSP.
--Jeremy
Jesus was a liberal
against its own success on that console, besides the technical issues is the constant war against homebrewers. Many people simply have bought that thing for homebrew and emulation, and now shun to buy new games due to enforced firmware upgrades which would lock them out of the homebrew stuff. If sony was wise, they would work on a scheme which would push the homebrewers into a legal domain without sacrificing their own business model (provide an update secure sandbox for the homebrewers on the hardware side) but we are speaking of Sony here.
0MFG!!!111one BOARD G4MIN 15 S0 UB3RL4mE 4nD 4 +0+4L SUXX[]Rz. B04RDG4M!N I5 50 +0+t411i L4m3. L33+3Rzz pl4y p3n + p4p3R RPGz and +0+4lly R0XX0R @+ T4BL3T0PS. MY W4RH4MMR F0RTYK4Y 4RMY +0+4LLY K!CK0Rz YOUR $4D B04rdG4MIN A$$!!!!111one! GET 4 L1F3, L4m3R!
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
So many people are trying to grasp at straws to "will" the PSP to be a success.
Even a marginal success. "The games are not that bad", "I did not count on using it to watch UMD movies anyway", etc, etc, etc. Meanwhile -- the DS is moving along kicking ass and taking names.
DISCLAIMER: I own neither. have used both, and am strictly using the inertia of the possitive DS stories and successes to VS. proven PSP failures and deficiencies to compare.
Plus, the video game market is huge, there was plenty of room to have "2" success stories at once. People so wanted the PSP to be huge. It just did not deliver. Sure it was sony, the same company that brought you the PS1 and the PS2 -- how could it not be a success?, we must be missing something. So many of the PS* fanboys have this beaten woman like syndrome -- to where they almost would rather take blame themselves than admit that Sony dropped the ball.
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
Why don't they make it so you could watch UMD's on your TV? I mean if they are going to charge so much for them why are we forced to watch it on such a small screen? Just a thought........
Noooooo!
I'm gonna have to chime in and say that connectivity is AMAZING - when you have all the pieces. I haven't had a chance to try Four Swords or Crystal Chronicals, but Pac Man Vs., which has three players on gamecube controllers controlling ghosts on the TV screen and the 4th controlling Pac Man on the GBA, is maybe the best party game ever. It's simple, as almost everyone has played pacman, it's pretty fast-paced, it doesn't allow teams (as whenever someone eats pacman you all trade controllers, so the three players as ghosts constantly rotates)...if you already have the connectivity stuff (which, if you can play 4 Swords or Crystal Chronicals, you do) BUY THIS GAME. It was $20 used when I bought it over 2 years ago and has probably come down. It's just so much fun.
-Trillian
How many good games do you need for a console?
Tons of people bought XBOX for only *one* game (Halo... just in case you were wondering).
I have 16 games for my PSP and I only regret buying one of them (friggin Prince of Persia). I love how the PSP makes game developers deemphasize graphics and flash and concentrate on game play.
1) More color options.
2) cheaper. 199 Euros is to much. Make it 160 Euros. And Add at least 1GB memorystick by default.
3) UMD passive media is to expensive. Allways has been. Make it cheaper. As in 30% less than DVD, minimum. It's to to expensive, period.
4) Linux Kit. Official.
5) Hack Guide. Official.
6) Keyboard. Various keyboards. 1 small, 1 folding. Zero hassle generic USB keyboard connection.
7) Game Boy Emulator. GBA Emulator. I'm dead serious.
8) Portrait screen option + army of gui designers for optimizing organizer apps. And army of devs to build zero fuss intergration into all standards on the planet.
9) Organizer power saving modes. (cheap optional clip on passive LCD, power saving hacks, whatever)
10) Periferal touchscreen. Ripp of the DS. Shamelessly.
11) Port all sub 500Mhz PC titles possible. I wanna play Mechwarrior, Incubation, UFO2000, Descent 1,2 & 3, Hi-Octane and some other titles on this thing.
12) Port all PS1 titles. All. Open an official "Burn PS1 UMD on demand" shop for it if needed. But offer that option.
13) Open up the plattform, specs for the official OS and all. Make it as close to a portable equivalent of the PC as possible. Encourage 3rd party engagement big time.
14) Spare battery loading station.
15) Add a primary touchscreen to the PSP 2.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
LocoRoco and homebrew.
OMG SONY IS tEH SUX...
(click)
OMG NINTEDO IS tEH...
(click)
OMG CONSOLES IS tEH S...
(click)
OMG PC GAMIN IStEH...
(click)
0MFG!!!111one BOARD...
Program received signal SIGSEGV, Segmentation fault.
(gdb) bt
(gdb) frame 3
#3 0x0432b031 in CalculateNewIQ() at IQ.cpp:1337
1337 CalculateNewIQ(pExperiencedSinceLast, pOldIQ)
(gdb) print pExperiencedSinceLast
$1 = 0x0
bastards.
That's funny, the PortableTV icon on my PSP says otherwise :)
Really, Sony actually has done this, and their setup isn't half bad. You can download anime, softcore porn, dramas -- basically anything Sony owns -- onto the PSP. However, you require a Japanese PSP, a high firmware (I use devhook to run 2.71), and an address in japan (fakeable).
So before you insult Sony for their unimaginativeness (in most cases it's justified), make sure you double check, eh?
The problem is that the games are too expensive for a handheld system by about 25%.
What sony should have done to make this whole PSP idea stick:
1) Give away UMD movies when you buy a Sony DVD. This might cost them a little revenue up front, but it would give people a reason to buy the DVD, and get a lot of people used to UMD movies. Once the format was established, they could then charge $10 for a movie. But they started out of the chute at $20-25 per movie. Senseless.
2) Make the thing hacker friendly. Stop trying so hard to lock people out of the thing with firmware upgrades.
3) Make the games $30 each. Take less on each game. Establish a market, then raise the price.
Really, the problem was that Sony hyped the PSP to the roof, then they read their own hype and believed it. I've never seen anything like it.
Meanwhile, over in nintendo land, they're keeping their nose to the grindstone and systematically upgrading their handheld platform to little fanfare.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Did you read my point? You only get WiFi connectivity out of the box if you buy the premuimum bundle. With Nintendo you get it standard. So lets see: $600 PS3 + $200 PSP = $800 Sony $200 Wii + $129 DS = $329 Nintendo Nintendo is still less then half after you buy whatever game you are going to play with the setup. Plus, I bet Nintendo is going to have at least 1 decent game with this connectivity, while it is doubtful Sony will have any.
Yes, but does the PSP cause its programmers to do this? http://www.mediuh.com/2950-unexpected-tv-vomit.htm l
[My english is better than most other people's german, so please point out mistakes politely. Thank you.]
I might have spotted one or two mistakes in that last post...
p3n p4p3R r s0 l4M3. r33l l33tz0rz y00z3 Ch1z37 4nD 5t0/\/3.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
The one time I did see a PSP was when I was waiting in line to get in the Convention Center and a pair of pseudo-"gangstas" (you know, the guys who walk with their pants riding at their knees, nice expensive air jordans, and a mountain of "bling" hanging from their neck) walked by, one of them with a PSP. I couldn't help but laugh at the irony. Here I was in a line full of nerds (myself included) who all had DSs, and the cool kids just walked by with their PSP. The thing is, nerds are probably the people that SONY would benefit the most from having as customers and nerds are probably the people who have the most incentive to buy a PSP. Something that they can download and watch anime on, and play emulated NES, SNES, and other classic consoles' games on while on the go. These people probably encompass most of the population who actually have the know-how, time, and patience to hack and make a PSP do such things. But did you see them owning a PSP? I certainly didn't. Nope, the PSP owners were the cool kids walking by, who probably only knew the basics of the system they possessed and it's features, and probably just got it because it was expensive and nice looking.
So based on my observations, the PSP is for cool kids. The DS is for nerds who like to communicate using phallic imagery and obscure japanese references. I currently don't know which demographic is larger, but I certainly know that the cool kids don't have conventions with 20,000+ attendees. And I also know that you can't communicate using phallic imagery on your PSP. Really, if a portable gaming system can't do a simple thing like that, then what's the point of owning one? ;)
How many of those work on new PSPs sold in stores, which come with firmware 2.7 or later? Besides, DS homebrew also has a video player, a streaming audio player, ScummVM, a keyboard/screen driver (Win2DS), and emulators for the NES, Game Boy Color, Super NES, Sega Master System, and Colecovision. And it runs GBA Game Paks natively.
Was out for the GBA before the PSP was out in Europe and Down Under.
With a PSP, you can't put your own songs into Lumines. With a GBA (or DS) and a $50 memory card, you can.
That's because I haven't seen one playable PSP in any Kmart, Wal-Mart, or Target store in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Even Best Buy didn't get demo units until well over a year after the system's North American release. Nintendo, on the other hand, had DS demo units in Wal-Mart from day one.
Nice decision; let me suggest something to add to your enjoyment. Have you considered buying the DS memory card so that you can put your own music into a Lumines clone?
Nintendo never distributed any rootkits.
Had Sony distributed from Day One a larger selection of PS1 to PSP ports, or a PS1 emulator, there wouldn't be as much complaint about a lack of PSP titles.
So how do I make homebrew on a 2.01 or newer PSP? The GTA exploits don't count because 1. they rely on a disc that is rated M and 2. the newer GTA discs are patched to perform more stringent savegame format sanity checking. And are new PSPs with firmware older than 2.7 even "on the market"?
GBA SP + SuperCard + 256 megabyte CF card + CF writer is cheaper than PSP + 256 megabyte Memory Stick PRO Duo card. And if you already own the GBA SP or the DS, it's even cheaper. Heck, a fully-tricked-out-for-homebrew DS is even cheaper than a stock PSP Value Pak.
And if you don't care about portability, you can still play Luminesweeper in VisualBoyAdvance on the same PC that you use to post to Slashdot.
This list contains both released and in-development games.
No, it's not. Sony went after two properties when choosing a screen: Big and Bright. They got those two, but they messed up the rest. First of all, it's blurry as hell. When I first played Ridge Racer on my PSP, I thought they had actually managed to implement motion blur on the PSP. "Wow, didn't think it could do that", I thought. Until I played some other games. All of them had motion blur. It's not the games, it's the sucky screen. It's especially visible in games like Lumines, Loco Roco or Puzzle Block Party. Watching dark or high-contrast movies becomes pretty much impossible. In some scenes in Advent Children, all characters have purple shadows following them. It's not the movie, it's the screen.
Second problem: It sucks batteries like, well, I was going to make a porn reference, but then I changed my mind since that would be a positive association. The screen, together with the disk drive, simply kill batteries. And since you have your own fricken hand over the battery light while playing, you usually don't notice it until the PSP simply suddenly goes to sleep. Great design there, Sony.
Third problem: Glare. You can't play PSP games in a Train or anywhere where any kind of sun is involved. It reflects like a mirror. What the heck were they thinking? Shiny looks nice when on display in a shop? Well, thank you, but did you actually think of the people who want to do crazy stuff like using your product? Guess not.
Also, the screen scratches very easily. I was very careful, but I got a scratch on my screen simply from accidentially dragging the little wrist band over it. Gah.
So, in conclusion: They managed to hit "bright" and "big", but they missed pretty much everything else. This makes the screen average to sucky for a portable.
The only time I've seen Pac Man Vs was as a demo from Shigeru Miyamoto. Did they actually release it? Is it a bonus on some Pac Man game? Where did you get it?
Hackers are begging to be allowed to play with this thing. That would create the momentum for great games and applications.
If Sony had half a clue, they would open and encourage development for the PSP, it could so easily become the defacto standard for portable, converging devices that it is tragic how they insist in closing the firmware with each new release.
The lessons of the IBM PC and Linux have not sinked inside the skulls of SOny executives, technical leaders and marketroids.
They will pay the price in the marketplace for such momentous lack of application.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
It's a real pity he's on the /. editorial team - the other editors at least attempt to write from a neutral viewpoint.
You're new here, aren't you?
That's out? When did that come out?
If you live in Japan, that one will hit this year.
Hasn't the trend been that the weaker console gets a larger library, and more sales? PS2 is weaker than all competitors
PS1 was weaker than all competitors
DS is weaker than PSP
Gameboy, and Gameboy Color were weaker than all competitors.
They also have the largest available library of titles...
Yep that's the gist. Of course this only applies to the newest psp's. Mine and everyone I know who has a psp up until recently have been able to downgrade their psp's without a problem. Yes if you want to get on the scene and you don't already have a psp AND you don't have the money, then and only then you'll have to wait til another exploit comes onboard. But that's not to stop everybody. There is already an exploit of 2.7 and some homebrew will make it there. Not the entire collection mind you, but some.
The Psp is not a bad device. I have a 1GB memory stick and that's alot of both homebrew movies, and music. but I've got my 4GB on the way(yay for cheaper prices!) and that makes the device that much more usable to me. Do me a favor and look at the DS homebrew wikipedia entry and understand that regaurdless of what DS you have you'll some sort of disadvantage. Not all PSP's have the disadvanges the new ones do. Honestly I got my psp for free(my birthday and all), but homebrew cost me nothing other than time and patience. And in the end everyone who has the time and patience can do what I did for free. If not either a ds or psp + a little time and money will get you what you want.
Not only have the games lack hurt the PSP (Gran Turismo Mobile anyone?), but the introduction of the Mylo will only further cause confusion in the consumer's minds, it will make buyers wonder which does which (especially as they both share video playback features etc). I think the best thing Sony could do right now is encourage developers to start working on more unique and push boundaries on the PSP and also think about the mistakes they have made so far in order for them to not repeat them on the PS3 development, a console which seems to already be facing some major problems (mainly cost related). Seems like Sony should take a long hard look at what they are doing right now and bring it back in line with what the market wants.
Business Voyeur