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The Future of the PSP

Posted by Zonk on from the pspotassium dept.

IGN has a longish piece up looking at the possible future of Sony's handheld. They examine the upcoming success of Sony's overshadowed creation via several excellent interviews from people with SCEA, first-party developers, third-party studios, and indies. I particularly enjoyed the comments by indie homebrew dev Fanjita, who had a great outsider's view of the little black dynamo. "I suspect there are 2 factors that make them especially resistant to homebrew on the PSP - the first is that point I just made, about not wanting to dent the already shaky platform image. The second is that we already know our way around almost all the PSP internals, and so they probably feel that there's a risk that a publicly endorsed, restricted homebrew platform would soon be cracked wide open, leaving them with an officially endorsed route to piracy. I like to believe that the capable homebrew devs would be respectful of a move from Sony to open up the platform, but it's obviously impossible to have any guarantees."

3 of 83 comments (clear)

  1. Re:To advance, correct errors rather than drag it. by The+MAZZTer · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Sorry, time to stop dreaming and wake up.

    1. Then how would you be able to play all the old PSP games that are already out there? Sorry this simply isn't a viable option for Sony.
    2. Ok... that will cost more.
    3. That will cost even more.
    4. Hello? I said MORE not less. Either you increase the price with more features or remove features (hard to do since the PSP already has a game library that relies on all those features) to cut price.
    5. Can't profit when you'd be losing money on every machine. Oh wait, Sony's already trying that with the PS3... we'll see how that goes. But considering Nintendo is making more on every Wii (they actually make a profit on the machines) than Sony makes on their PS3s AND the Wiis are STILL hard to find in some places (it's rediculous!) while PS3s aren't nearly that bad, I think Sony's strategy isn't working very well unless they get a higher games-to-systems sell ratio (unlikely).
    6. I think all your PSP2 stuff is a duh. If Sony continues it's "bigger is better" strategy that Nintendo is deviating, very successfully, from. I personally want to see some innovation from Microsoft and Sony in their next consoles, like Nintendo has been doing. That would be interesting.
  2. Myth that there are no good games by grapeape · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I am so sick of the fanboy "my psp collects dust and I play my DS everyday" line. Its tired everyone has heard it. My primary consoles consist of a Wii, Ps2, 3 ds's (1 phat and 2 lites for a family of 5) and 1 PSP. Im definately not a Sony fanboy and play lots of DS games but to dismiss the PSP as being no good means either the person is not looking at the games available or they were so caught up in that argument a year ago when it was true that they are blind to whats available now.

    No matter what genre there are good games these are just off the top of my head:

    Advenure Games: Lego Star Wars, Metal Gear Solid Portable Op's
    RTS Games: Pirates!, Field Commander
    RPG Games: Dungeon Seige, Marvel Ultimate Alliance,
    FPS Games: Socom 2, Medal of Honor Heroes
    Rythym Games: Guitaroo Man Lives!
    Racing Games: Burnout Legends, Wipeout Pure
    Action Games: Daxter, Rachet and Clank
    Puzzle Games: Locoroco, Me & My Katamari, Lumines 1&2, Puzzle Quest, Mercury Meltdown
    Fighting Games: Tekken: Dark Resurrection
    Old School Classics: Ultimate Ghosts and Goblins, Metal Slug Anthology
    Sports Games: Madden 07, MLB 07, Winning Eleven

    As far as actual numbers of games the PSP actually has a hundred or so more than the DS. It had a slow start but the PSP has delivered more than I ever expected and to say it has no good games is delusional.

  3. More fanboyism. by dannycim · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I sat next to a guy playing his DS on the subway yesterday. I was playing Ratchet & Clank on my PSP. He stopped playing to look at my screen, with obvious envy. I listen to my MP3s (screen off, locked in my pocket, long battery life), I watch movies and anime, I read E-books, do a bit of web-surfing, and play a few games, so I'm really happy with the PSP.

    I've had every type of gameboys and have always been frustrated by the displays. To me, the DS was a huge mistake. Instead of giving us two crappy small displays, they should have made it with one large one.