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Is There Anything Wrong With The PSP?
An anonymous reader writes "In the latest 'Analyze This' series of exclusive Gamasutra features, analysts from Screen Digest, ABI Research and DFC Intelligence look at what Sony and developers can do to improve the PSP platform, to generate more excitement for it among developers, gamers and the industry overall — or if they even need to. 'My feelings on the PSP are mixed: It has shown there is demand for a more high-end portable system. The portable market has room for two competing portable systems. We forecast that over the next five years dedicated portable systems will sell just as many units as the new console systems. However, the PSP could really use a new model. This has been the secret to Nintendo's success.'"
No touch screen. PDA's were around way before the PSP came out, it should have been the first thing they thought of. Both the PSP and GP2x suffer from the same problem. A touchscreen makes the device so much more versatile. Web browsers, calculators, calenders, console type applications, etc are much easier to do with a touch screen. It vastly opens up the possibilities for home-brew stuff.
Both the PSP and GP2x are high-powered cool machines but without a touchscreen I'm going to stick with my Nintendo DS.
The ratio of people to cake is too big
i suspect the main thing the psp needs are games and not UMD movies. All th PSP has are broken ports and the occasional remix. There is a reason why they have a ps1 emulator on it and most people use it for homebrew.
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
Don't cripple your product!
If the PSP had been able to play movies at full resolution from the flash-card instead of only from the craptastic UMD then I would have bought one instead of the Video Ipod that I own now.
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
Stop spending time, effort and money deliberately making it hard for people to develop their own software. Sony should be encouraging that, not making it harder. (They could reinstate lik-sang and pay them damages, too).
Sony needs to stop allowing their movie / music division to dictate to their consumer electronics division. They added UMD movies to the PSP that nobody wants. They added Blu-Ray to PS/3 and slipped their schedule out a year and added hundreds of dollars to the consoles cost. They keep putting all sorts of unwanted DRM into everything. Sell it off and get back to making well-designed consumer electronics.
[Insert pithy quote here]
The PSP has had problems from day 1. I own one. I regret it. I haven't touched it in a long time. Their biggest mistake? The control scheme. NO SECOND ANALOG STICK. Considering how Sony really popularized that (during the PS1 time frame) and everyone uses it these days, not having it on the console is a huge mistake. It makes things tough for many of the games out there. Katamari got a weird control scheme, no good camera control in FPSes or 3D platformers (NOTE: I own a DS, which I love, but I think they should have put one analog stick on it). The games draught (as I see it) is the biggest problem. There is only ONE game I can think of that I am looking forward to: God of War for the PSP and I don't even think that has been officially announced.
How to improve it at this point? Better games, pure and simple. There have been so many games I've played in the past year or two on my DS compared to a tiny handful on my PSP.
Opening some kind of homebrew (even if regulated and locked down) would give me new interest because then I could make stuff and try other peoples. That wouldn't solve the games problem, but it would help some.
Interesting system, problems in design, I regret I purchased it (especially considering it's original price).
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Overall, the PSP seems to have been designed for style and coolness first, with usability second. Consequently, the analog stick is pure shit and almost unusable. The D-pad is better, but not a whole lot so. With my smaller hands, the shoulder buttons are all but unusable as well.
The crossbar interface, or whatever Sony's calling it this month, while lauded on the PS3 - I find to be pretty underwhelming on the PSP as well. Sony should have just thrown this out and again - spent time looking for an interface that was more usable than 'cool'.
UMD game load-times are so atrociously slow that when I still had a PSP, bothering to change games simply doesn't worth it. If I didn't want to play the game that was already in there, or if I actually turned my PSP off rather than simply putting it on standby you couldn't just pick the system up and get that 'quick game fix' that portables are supposed to be so wonderful for.
The only place the developers can help of course is in the games department... fortunately (for them,) this is another one of the PSP's huge failings. Quit with the tired, crappy ports, and come out with more new and fun games on the system. Learn it's limitations and weaknesses, especially the media limitations. Design games that are quick to load, don't rely on that crappy analog... thing, and don't make you sit looking at a loading screen for two to three minutes any time you load a save, or move to a new level, or something along those lines.
As long as the PSP still suffers from THIS, gamers are just going to keep shutting it off and picking their DS back up.
It only costs 30% more than the Nintendo DS Lite right now for more functionality out of the box.
Its load times are obnoxious for a portable.
Certain games are bad, yes, but not all. I own 14 PSP games and none of them have load times that have made me annoyed or anything like that.
It's too big to stick in your pocket.
Funny, I just put mine in my pocket with no problem and I have the Mad Catz clamshell on it which increases the size quite a bit.
The control scheme is awkward.
The joystick is weird, but personally I got used to it fairly easily. Other than that, everything is fine control-wise for me. The issue may actually be that the games you've played are ports of PS(X/2) games and therefore you're used to the PS2 controller layout.
The games suck.
Purely personal preference. I mean, like I stated above, I have 14 games and I like them all. I only own about 6 DS games in comparison.
The battery life sucks.
You know, my friend complained about his PSP's battery life, but mine's been fairly good for as long as I've owned it. It's been about as good as my NDS when both are at a full charge. I can tell you that if you leave the wireless networking on, it won't last as long. It also eats up power while sitting there dormant.
Nobody wants to buy movies again on UMD.
Agreed with that. UMD is useless, because it costs as much as a DVD and unlike a DVD, you have limited use! If the PSP had a video output feature, it may have been better, but there isn't one.
Sony makes it.
It sounds all "Anti-Sony fanboi" flamish but there are reasons. For years, dare I say decades, I was a Sony zealot. They had some of the best audio components available for a while. I loved the home theater products I purchased from them. I still have an AV receiver of theirs from the 90-92 range running in my gameroom.
I got turned off starting with the Mini-disc and moving forward. It became somewhat obvious to me that Sony was, as someone else mentioned, letting the media division push an agenda on the hardware division and hardware innovation suffered. The PS3 for instance was a shameless and unhidden push to get a format into prominence by loss selling a console. Any time you have a company selling hardware at a loss hoping to make up the money on software you no longer have an innovative hardware company. (I'm also looking at Apple somewhat with that statement as well , although on a computer hardware front they're starting to do some impressive things lately)
The fact is if you buy a PsP and use it in accordance with how Sony wants you have a crippled hand-held platform. If the only way to get real performance and value out of the platform involves hacks, that should be a big red flag.
I'm a fiscal conservative, it's a pity we don't have a political party anymore
Homebrew sites were excited as flies at a freshly-fertilized organic tomato farm before Sony repeatedly updated the firmware to get rid of them. Sony seems worried enough about protecting a market for UMD games that they're willing to lose system sales to homebrew game fans.
People who want a $200-$300 handheld homebrew-friendly system may just go the GP2X route instead. I think last time I checked you could still get a PSP to boot Linux from MS Pro Duo and play games on that. If you want a GP2X, though you'll probably just buy a GP2X. The only advantage I can see to PSP over GP2X is that it also plays UMD games, but look at the list of games for the GP2X.
Also, try getting OpenSSH, a Gameboy emulator, etc on your PSP without the latest Sony firmware updates screwing all of that over.