The PSP - Sony's Missed Opportunity

C|Net passes on the words of Forrester analyst James McQuivey, who lambasts Sony for failing to live up to the opportunity the PSP presented. Though the handheld has certainly been doing better of late, it's hard not to point out that the PlayStation Portable's sales numbers flag in the face of the DS's incredible popularity. McQuivey also makes a point of stating how well the system could have done at taking a slice of Apple's death-grip on the downloadable media market. "'The thing is, Sony could have been all this,' McQuivey said. 'The Sony PSP is one of the best portable entertainment media devices that anyone has come up with in years. It has a relatively big screen, plays video beautifully, has good storage and audio. It could have been the first big mobile carrier for TV shows and movies.' Instead, the mobile-video play of one of the world's largest electronics companies is straggling behind Apple, has shaken the confidence of supporters--especially in Hollywood--and added to the woes of CEO Howard Stringer."

Comments

Has Good Storage?!?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

has good storage

Help me out here. Video iPods have either 30GB or 80GB of storage built in. The PSP has freaky non standard "disks" that users can't burn or proprietary flash storage that nobody outside of Sony uses, nothing built in.

Re:Has Good Storage?!?!?

[Fulg]

The PSP uses standard SD cards, which are manufactured and used in many devices having nothing to do with Sony.

If by "standard SD cards" you mean "Sony MemoryStick Pro Duo", then yes.

Or is there a secret SD slot that I haven't found yet on my PSP? [Full disclosure - I don't like Sony either]

Re:Has Good Storage?!?!?

[Apparition-X]

Erm, no, it doesn't. Sorry. It uses Memory Stick, which is a Sony proprietary format. You can buy third party versions, but it is obvious that they pay a licensing fee to Sony. Compare prices for 2 GB memory stick to 2 GB SD both from Lexar, for example.

Re:Has Good Storage?!?!?

[Hennell]

This is slashdot. I think the full disclosure is only needed if you like sony.

---
How exactly do rats desert a sinking ship?
---

Re:Has Good Storage?!?!?

[walnutmon]

why hasn't Zonk posted the Dead Goat story yet? Does he hate fun?!

Re:Has Good Storage?!?!?

[fishdan]

PSP plays a major role in my weight loss plan. Every day I copy an avi from my media library to my mac book pro. I convert it to PSP format with ffmpeg (which has a preset PSP format! Thanks!) which takes about 5 mins for 40 mins of video (a 1 hour show with the commercials stripped). I then copy the convert file to my psp from my mbp via usb which takes

You're refering to the UMD disks, which are indeed very proprietary, but about to go away to be replaced by downloadable movies

Re:Has Good Storage?!?!?

[SQLz]

Here is the strategy....

"Now, what we'll do is, lock them into our own media form factor that is a SD card under the hood, but 1mm smaller on each side! Genious. Then, since they bought this $50 media card, all they will do is buy sony electronics that work with it for the rest of their life!!!! Awesome!"

"*Raise hand* What happens when the media card is obsolete in 3 months and they figured out that it doesn't work with 80% of the other devices on the market?"

Re:Has Good Storage?!?!?

[CronoCloud]

iPods have a lot of storage, but the battery doesn't last long enough to play 30GB of video. The battery on the PSP will last longer than the iPods playing video of the stick.

And the PSP has built in wifi/web browser/RSS/and the ability to stream from a PS3. Watch all your content, download more wherever you go.

Re:Has Good Storage?!?!?

[Mattcelt]

There's even a GPS module available for the PSP. It's an amazing little device.

But there are three major problems with it:
1) There is no way to output the video to an external device (mentioned in the article);
2) The UMD format is proprietary, closed, and unavailable to anyone who does not have a licensing agreement with Sony;
3) Sony has gone severely out of their way, in an escalating battle, to keep users from hacking the unit. Even now it requires taking advantage of a vulnerability in third-party applications to load a downgraded firmware to allow homebrew applications to run.

Sony really did cut themselves off at the knees on this one. Had they embraced their users instead of trying to control every little thing they did, it could have been a huge success.

Re:Has Good Storage?!?!?

[CronoCloud]

I agree on the homebrew and in fact did call Sony to complain about it, I also complained on the G.A.P forums. They should do something, even if homebrewers would need to submit their software to Sony for approval before getting them "signed".

I figure that if they could have figured out a way to support Linux easily on the PSP they'd have done that, even if they didn't support homebrew directly on the firmware.

As I've said on other ocassions the PSP is the anomaly among Sony gaming systems, all the others support amateur/hobbyist development. The PS1 with the Yaroze program and the PS2/PS3 with Linux.

Re:Has Good Storage?!?!?

[elrous0]

Sony's "control freak" nature has become legendary over the decades, and it is their great Archilles' heal. They obsessively push proprietary formats. They fight homebrew like it was written by Satan. They introduce DRM schemes that even Satan WOULDN'T have written. They do these things even when it is clearly financially suicidal to do so. And they refuse to learn a damn lesson when this obsessiveness leads to failure (which it has done MANY times since the infamous Beta/VHS debacle).

Why does Sony do this, when it seems counterintuitive to do so? Because they have the eternal constraint of being BOTH a hardware/software company AND a media content producer. This means that they are just as obsessed with maintaining control over their media (their bread and butter) as they are with the quality of their hardware and software. That means that, instead of asking "How can we make UMD popular?" they're asking "How can we lock UMD down so no one can use it to produce a pirated copy of our movie Spiderman?"

Re:Has Good Storage?!?!?

[LKM]

So all the work you have to do to get movies to run on the PSP helps you lose weight?

By the way, I use PSPWare, which costs something, but makes converting movies for the PSP and synchronizing them to it very straightforward.

ODD

[king-manic]

The criticism are somewhat valid but you can play non UMD movies on the PSP. Just stick then in mp4 in the right resolution on a memory stick and your good. It's be nice if it supported something other then memory stick or had a sizable internal drive. I do think Sony Music/Movies are clobbering Sony electronics/Games with demands to include things that are superfluous to the function of the device. I enjoy the bluray on my Ps3, I'd enjoy it more if sony pictures released downloadable movies.

Re:ODD

[soft_guy]

If they were smart they would have left out the UMD drive and put a big fucking hard disk in there instead with a USB 2.0 port and the ability to download movies from online.

Re:ODD

[Sibko]

I enjoy the bluray on my Ps3, I'd enjoy it more if sony pictures released downloadable movies. Err... if Sony Pictures released downloadable movies, what's the point in the bluray DVD player?

Re:ODD

[popo]

Not true entirely. You can't play a movie off your memory stick at the PSP's full resolution. Why? Because Sony crippled memory stick playback to give UMD a visual advantage. Once again, Sony's efforts to lock in greater profits end up biting them in the ass. The PSP wasn't half as 'usable' as it could have been, and no self respecting geek wanted one because it was too crippled for effective video download/playback. Once again, Sony limits the options of the consumer -- and loses.

Re:ODD

[king-manic]

Waiting 8h for a movies isn't that convenient. I have 3.0 mbit internet the competitor offers up to 8.0 but thats cable so I get 8.0 only late at night. at either speed a 13 gig movie is a bit much for me. my time is worth more then the movie.

Re:ODD

[AvitarX]

Shouldn't that be "convenience is worth more than the movie"?

It is not like you have to suck all the bits into your house with a straw. In fact, one could envision "renting" the movie the night before when the DL would be at its fastest.

Re:ODD

[CronoCloud]

Not true entirely. You can't play a movie off your memory stick at the PSP's full resolution. Why? Because Sony crippled memory stick playback to give UMD a visual advantage.

Sure you can, though you'll need firmware 3.30+ to do so, Sohy removed the restriction a few weeks back.

Re:ODD

[aikouka]

Any self-respecting geek would simply "hack" the PSP using a modified firmware (which is quite easy to do... as simple as the old XBOX softmods). Using these modified firmwares, you can play videos at different resolutions and even different containers (rather than just mp4).

I believe the hacks are the reasons why PSPs will start selling more combined with the new $169 price, which puts it only $40 more than the Nintendo DS Lite. Also, recently Sony finally shifted prices down on the older games using the Playstation's "Greatest Hits" moniker.

But in light of this article, which is about Sony screwing over the PSP... I don't think anyone would argue against it. Sony made some poor choices when it came to the PSP (and some may say when it came to the PS3 as well).

Re:ODD

[hawkinspeter]

What kind of movie is 13GB? You're not trying to play HD on a PSP are you?

Re:ODD

[Anonymous Coward]

Your comment does not make a bit of sense you have no idea what you are talking about. Videos look fine from a memory stick I am using Sony's firmware and I can say I see no difference in quality.

Re:ODD

[popo]

My comment makes perfect sense if you knew anything about the history of the PSP firmware. For years the PSP *would not* play full resolution
videos off the memory stick. There were 2 hacks along the way which allowed this and Sony nerfed the hacks with firmware revisions.

ONLY in the latest version of the firmware does Sony permit full resolution video playback off the memory stick. Don't be confused and think
Sony has "come around" to being a nice guy -- they've simply called the UMD dead and are now racing to the table with non crippled video --
a day late and many, many dollars short.

Hopefully this comment was easier for you to understand. You're clearly new to PSP video.

Re:ODD

[popo]

Yeah, now -- in 2007 (now that the UMD is officially dead) you can play full screen video. Hardly a stellar performance from Sony.

Re:ODD

[The Warlock]

Thing is, if you're going to hack it anyway, you might as well get a GP2X or something, which is unlocked to begin with.

Re:ODD

[CronoCloud]

At least they did do it, better late than never. Hopefully they'll do the same with hobbyist development in some way.

Re:ODD

[king-manic]

PS3, blu-ray movies start around 13bg and go up from there.

Betamax,UMD,BluRay

[CK2004PA]

Well, if Sony didn't force a non-standard propietary format (UMD) down your throat when you bought one they probably would have done better. They failed with Betamax, then UMD and now BluRay on the PS3Cast.

Re:Betamax,UMD,BluRay

[JordanL]

How is DVD any less proprietary? The only difference is that all the other companies went ahead and paid their licensing fees for it.

Add on top of that the fact that BluRay is outselling HDDVD signifigantly and the "PS3Cast" swipe and I can only assume that your post was nothing but flamboyantly anti-Sony diatribe.

Re:Betamax,UMD,BluRay

[renegadesx]

DVD- was propierety, DVD+ was open.

Re:Betamax,UMD,BluRay

[DDLKermit007]

Yeah, hate to break it to you, but BR has failed. Not against HD-DVD, but itself. DVD is good enough for 99% of the population. The sales figures validate this assumption as well. A higher price per disk, and new hardware for something that really all it has going for it is that it's "more digital" than the thing it wants so badly to replace is not what I'd call "compelling". Most of the population watches movies & TV on sub 30" TVs still, and pretty much will until the end of time. People only have so much money, and space to deal with.

Re:Betamax,UMD,BluRay

[node 3]

Blu-ray has been out less than a year. A year after DVD was introduced, I'm certain VHS sales absolutely *dwarfed* DVD sales.

As time passes, more and more people will be buying HDTVs. Not necessarily 5' plasmas, but HDTVs nonetheless. As they do, they will want their movies in high def as well.

People only have so much money, and space to deal with. I don't even remotely understand what you are trying to say here. People have *always* "only had so much money", and they bought TVs, computers, video players, etc. in the past. I don't see why they'll stop any time soon. As for space, a similarly sized non-CRT HDTV takes up much less space than a CRT.

The only way I can see HD-DVD or BD failing is if their uptake is so slow that a downloadable HD format overtakes them (this *should* happen, but you know how the movie industry is). But at this point, it's far too early to count either format out (although I wouldn't bet on HD-DVD, the adoption rate of both are still so low that either could win overall).

Re:Betamax,UMD,BluRay

[GreatDrok]

"Add on top of that the fact that BluRay is outselling HDDVD signifigantly..."

Remember how Betamax was *THE* video tape format early on but lost out to VHS in the long term because VHS machines were more widely and cheaply available. Many people assume it was porn but in fact it was price. HD DVD still has an opportunity to do the same so I don't think the current rates of BD sales are any reason the claim the format has won.

Re:Betamax,UMD,BluRay

[bogjobber]

Reread that post because you obviously didn't the first time. He never claimed that Blu-ray has won the format war. He was simply pointing out that DVD is also proprietary and Blu-ray is far from being considered a failure, it is in fact probably leading HD-DVD.

Re:Betamax,UMD,BluRay

[LordRobin]

HD-DVD or Blu-Ray will overtake DVD at the time the prices of the hardware and software begin to approach that of DVD, and not a moment before. DVD had huge advantages over VHS: random access, special features, vastly better picture, and CD-quality stereo sound. The only advantage of HD-DVD or Blu-Ray over DVD is a better picture. But it's not a vastly better picture, and the difference is notable only on larger sets.

I own a modest 32" 720p LCD set. Over the weekend, a friend brought over his PS3 and we watched a little of the Talladega Nights disc. The picture was better than DVD, but not by much. Certainly not enough to inspire me to run out and drop $600+ on a PS3 or Blu-Ray player.

Now, if I'd owned a 50"+ 1080p set, I'm sure I would have been blown away. But I didn't feel like re-engineering my living space around a monster TV set, so I went for the smaller one. Most people who buy HDTV sets will be like me. The biggest growth in HDTV sales is around the 32" range. They're more affordable and easier to find room for.

So given all that, I don't expect consumers to stampede toward HD-DVD or Blu-Ray. Eventually, the price of whichever format wins will drop to the point where there will no longer be any reason not to upgrade, and only then will you see the new format be taken up in large numbers.

------RM

Re:Betamax,UMD,BluRay

[MeanderingMind]

The key difference between DVD vs VHS and BR/HD vs DVD is simple; the DVD's targeted device had 100% market penetration at the time.

For all of the feature differences, that's the single-most important distinction. If you had a TV you could use a DVD player with it and have full access to all its benefits. The same can not be said of Bluray or HD-DVD.

Eventually, everyone will have HDTVs. This is not a contestable point. However, "eventually" can be a long time from now. As you aptly noted, it's entirely possible that by the time we hit "eventually" Bluray and HD-DVD will be obsolete anyway.

Re:Betamax,UMD,BluRay

[sqlrob]

It's outselling "significantly", yet numbers of less than a thousand are enough to get on the top 10 sales chart. It may be doing better, but it still sucks in the grand scheme.

Re:Betamax,UMD,BluRay

[node 3]

Eventually, everyone will have HDTVs. This is not a contestable point. However, "eventually" can be a long time from now. As you aptly noted, it's entirely possible that by the time we hit "eventually" Bluray and HD-DVD will be obsolete anyway. Right. None of which supports the notion that Blu-ray is already dead.

Instead, it supports my assertion that it's too early to proclaim defeat for Blu-ray, simply due to the fact that the market is still growing.

"Eventually" may indeed be a long time. I don't think the criteria should be "everyone having HDTVs", but instead a sufficient market size to keep Blu-ray healthy (ie. that every major film released on DVD is also released on BD). Certainly, sufficient HDTV market saturation will happen in less than 30 years.

But even though uptake is slow (but growing), and even though there's current-gen competition from HD-DVD, eventual next-gen competition from whatever comes next, and potential, but as yet woefully unrealized, competition from HD downloads, it's far, far too early to count BD out, which was the entire point of my post. None of your (correct) observations change that.

Re:Betamax,UMD,BluRay

[Anonymous Coward]

Errr... on a 720P TV, how did you expect a 1080P movie to look much better than your 480P DVD-Videos?

Give BD a chance, for fuck's sake.

From the Article

[Anonymous Coward]

the movie industry was pulling for the PSP to emerge as a competitor to the iPod. Steve Jobs won big concessions from the music industry after running away with the digital music market. The film industry didn't want to be thrust into the same position.

In other words the Movie industry is hoping Sony succeeds because Sony will help "protect their profits", largely by forcing users to repurchase their movie collections and pay through the nose for any entertainment they want to watch. Any wagers on why the iPod with a smaller screen and bigger price tag is winning? Maybe consumers aren't the idiots Slashdot'ers think they are?

Re:From the Article

[KillerCow]

the Movie industry is hoping Sony succeeds because Sony will help "protect their profits",

You do realize that Sony is in the movie business, don't you?

Re:From the Article

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe consumers aren't the idiots Slashdot'ers think they are?

Or maybe they are. Anyone who would buy a crappy iPod video when the Zen Vision and A2 exist is an idiot.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8 2E16855102014
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8 2E16855603835

vs.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8 2E16855101008

DRM, vendor lock in, and...

[pallmall1]

consumer gouge adds up to dead goat.

The topless babes are OK, though.

Hmm...

[Pojut]

Despite my thoughts of Sony as a corporation, I must say that I love my PSP. I can rip any of my DVD's and play them right on there with absolutely no modding or anything necessary...I can sit in a coffee shop and browse the net...or I can pop in a game and just do whatever.

And of course, the v1.5 homebrew stuff is always fun.

Sure, the battery kinda blows (which can be very much helped with aftermarket bats) and the loading times a bit slow, but it's still a fantastic little toy.

Re:Hmm...

[Anonymous Coward]

> which can be very much helped with aftermarket bats

A lot of problems with Sony portable hardware can be helped with the application of a bat.

Re:Hmm...

[IvanTheNotSoBad]

I can rip any of my DVD's and play them right on there with absolutely no modding or anything necessary

What software are you using to do that? And will it work with a non-modded PSP? You make it sound like it's just like iTunes where you just put in the CD, click rip, and you're done.

One thing is for certain, that software isn't from Sony.

Re:Hmm...

[CronoCloud]

Probably he's using PSP video 9 (or something similar) to do the encoding. But it's not difficult to do. Sony does offer their own encoding software, which isn't bad I hear. but most folks just use the free ffmpeg based stuff.

Re:Hmm...

[Lumpy]

I can do all that and more with my Nokia 770.

websurfing is a dream on it compared to a PSP. I can listen to webcasts, make a phone call on it. chat.
watch movies, mp3's play videogames, Yes you can play games on it.

I got my second N770 for less than what you buy a PSP for. get more use out of it, also can surf the net via my cellphone with it if I am away from wifi coverage.

2 gig miniSD holds 4 movies for me, a crapload of photos and music.

the PSP is good at playing PSP games. everything else is a add on with big limitations. the movies on it suck if they are not played from a UMD as sony crippled the resolution from memory stick playback.

if you want to play movies where you go get a mp4 player with hard drive. if you want to surf the web get a device that has a touchscreen. Dont get a PSP for those reasons, get a PSP for the games.

Re:Hmm...

[Bourbon Man]

http://www.tucows.com/preview/427178
The AVS DVD Player. Freeware. Click the "DVD to PSP" button.

PSP and PS3 will share the same fate

[leather_helmet]

It is interesting how SONY tried to position the PS3 in almost the same wayas the PSP

Super fantastic graphics that blow away the competition, feature X, Y & Z, Creepy commercials, etc.

Although the PSP sales numbers are not all that bad, it miserably failed to reach numbers even close to the DS...

Re:PSP and PS3 will share the same fate

[AudioInfecktion]

Yup.. They share the same fate as the goat. Guys, Sony as a company has completely lost their heads. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/new s/news.html?in_article_id=451414&in_page_id=1770&c t=5

Add homebrew unfriendly to the list!

[countSudoku()]

Let's not forget the many asinine "security updates" they force fed to us early adopters to keep the homebrew developers from actually adding something useful to that oversized (physically), overpriced (duh), underwhelming (storage) "wish I was a video iPod." I thought they had pulled their collective heads out of their asses, but now that the latest updated supports PS1 downloads, but *only* via another overpriced POS, the PS3, I see that nothing has changed. They made their bed. Lie in it, Sony.

Yeah, I agree, the storage has to be the worst thing about the system, overall. UMD was a joke, right? $20 a pop for less movie/features than a standard DVD... MemoryStick?! Waste of money.
It *could* have been a contender, but it's only a nice widescreen legacy now.

Way to make every wrong turn, Sony... the one and only. :(

Re:Add homebrew unfriendly to the list!

[Frogbert]

Well that is one way of thinking about it.

I happen to have both a DS and a PSP, and I can say without a doubt that if you are into homebrew the PSP is your best bet.

Besides the more powerful hardware the primary advantage is the single storage standard. Homebrew only needs to know how to access the MSPro and that is is, compared to the DS this is a dream. With the DS you need to either program homebrew specifically for the flash device you are using or go with DFDI patches. This is good in theory but in reality the DS homebrew scene is full of almost working apps.

The PSP on the other hand just requires a firmware downgrade followed by a custom firmware flash and you are good to go, the whole process takes about 30 minutes if you have a supported PSP and downgrades are coming out all the time.

Now each systems have their own benefits, and that is why I have both, but to say the PSP is a bad system is a just unfair. I could say that the DS is underpowered, hurts to hold for a long time and needs a better screen and is too difficult to get homebrew working on, but that would be completely avoiding all the good points of the system.

Re:Add homebrew unfriendly to the list!

[donaldm]

Asinine "security updates" - have you ever tried to keep your Microsoft OS up to date?

If you want home-brew games on a portable machine then the PSP was never for you. In fact neither was any Nintendo handheld. As far as being over priced why did you even spend the money on one unless you never got one in the first place and are just trolling.

The PSP over-sized, really! you must have very small hands or have you forgotten the Nintendo Gameboy.

Storage - please name a portable gaming machine that has more storage. A PDA does come close but you don't have the gaming controls.

The UMD is a joke. In what way? How would you design something like the PSP and what cheap, reliable, robust portable media would you use keeping mind that the PSP was developed a few years ago when flash cards and micro disk drives of any significant size were not cheap if available? Even today selling movies on a cheap flash drive (I know the PSP uses Sony's memory stick) would be prohibitive. Forget about DVD (to big) or micro DVD they would get scratched so easily. I suppose you could go back to proprietary cartridges but these are like flash cards.

Personally I would find watching a movie or even playing a game on a small screen like the PSP's a pain (the DS IMHO is not any better) so I don't have one, still some people want that and that's fine with me.

Yes the PSP is a "failure" because it is second to the Nintendo DS so Sony is crying all the way to the bank. Please check the stock market share price on Sony if you don't believe me I personally would love to have that sort of failure.

Re:Add homebrew unfriendly to the list!

[Anonymous Coward]

... oversized? what?

think about it. the lcd practically covers the entire front, aside from a tiny bit of space for buttons. on the back there's the UMD drive, which must take up at least some space. then somewhere there's a battery, wlan adapter... and of course, don't forget the actual cpu/gpu whatever else that rivals ps2's performance (albeit at a lower resolution). if you ask me, the psp is one of the most remarkable consumer electronics devices i've seen.

Re:Add homebrew unfriendly to the list!

[countSudoku()]

Personally, I don't bother using Windows unless my workplace is forcing it on me and I can't provide the same functionality on my Sun Ultra 25 using Firefox and the very capable Citrix client. At home my "windows box" plays only Solaris 10 x86 or Linux(gentoo or ubuntu) and *rarely* do I bother to fire up XP unless I want to play a game on it (how far we have come; Macs were first refered to as "toys", but now my PC is little more than that and my Macs do the real jobs of browsing/video-DVD authoring/etc.), but we digress. No, I truly enjoy my PSP for what it's best at; playing some of the first-third party UMD based titles (Lego Star Wars II, GTA, Hot Shots Golf, etc.), playing ripped DVDs and some browsing of "light" web pages (out of memory, anyone?). My beef is with the way Sony treats the homebrew scene with disdain and downright hostility. Homebrewers are not "pirates", they're clever individuals who can actually help Sony sell systems in the long run and give upper-end consumers, like us, the ability to see the system running something other than what Sony approves of. In the USA I've only ever seen UMDs for purchase by themselves, not bundled with a standard DVD, so $20+ for a UMD movie is just outrageous. And correct me if I'm wrong, but I've yet to see any other device with a UMD drive in it. And although I own tons of Sony gear, and have since the 80's, the mistreatment of the homebrewers aside, the MemoryStick is overpriced and a weak storage platform only useful to people who buy only Sony branded gear (PS3/Cameras/TVs/PDAs/etc).

So, to sum up; I'm no Sony hater, I'm no developer, I'm a consumer and gamer and Sony had me going with the PSP, but their actions after its' release are nothing short of hostile and proprietary. And yes, I have big hands and still think the PSP is slightly oversized. Oh, and where are the custom and replaceable faceplates for it already? Nice device, bad company.

Re:Add homebrew unfriendly to the list!

[prockcore]

The PSP over-sized, really! you must have very small hands or have you forgotten the Nintendo Gameboy.

So you're saying the PSP is very reasonably sized compared to a device that came out 18 years ago?

two words

[Anonymous Coward]

battery

life

Thank God For Homebrew and Custom Firmware

[Croakyvoice]

Sony messed up on a lot of things for the PSP but the PSP brought Homebrew and Emulators on the PSP to the mainstream like never before and the releases of Custom Firmwares that play PSone Games at full speed really brought the PSP to the masses. Fanjita and Dark Alexs downgraders/homebrew loaders have shown the best of what can be done on the PSP. To date there has been over 1000 Homebrew and Emulation releases on the PSP. The PSP isnt all that bad.

Re:Thank God For Homebrew and Custom Firmware

[cascino]

Yes, but this doesn't help the console. If Sony would evaluate their options from the consumer's point of view, we could very easily have these features come standard on the PSP. Instead clever individuals like Dark Alex are engaged in an "arms war" of sorts where each month a new incremental firmware is released by Sony in an attempt to keep end users from taking full advantage of, for example, the PS1-PSP capabilities. The scene is forced underground, and the average consumer is kept unaware of what functionality is possible with the PSP.

I personally have a PSP and must say that being able to play FFVII in full speed on the road is nothing short of amazing. I would have easily put down $10-20 for this capability. The unfortunate part for Sony is that they still doesn't realize that *enabling* the consumer is what sells products, not disabling features from them.

Re:Thank God For Homebrew and Custom Firmware

[IvanTheNotSoBad]

You are absolutely right. The only problem is that it only really holds true for us slashdot types (sorry for generalizing). If my little sister saw me playing Super Mario Bros. on my PSP, and she wanted to do the same, do you really think I could just give her those links?

"If you're at firmware 2.70 you could just downgrade to 1.5 and install nesterJ"....her response: "what's a firmware?"

PSP is by far one of the best "gadgets" I've ever come across....but I have to go underground to make it so. On it's own it's crap just like most things Sony make these days. Sony wants to control what you can and cannot do on the device you own...and that's why the PSP is a failure.

Re:Thank God For Homebrew and Custom Firmware

[Frogbert]

I'd just like to warn anyone considering installing the custom firmware above that they are old versions, there are newer and better supported custom firmware versions out there.

Re:Thank God For Homebrew and Custom Firmware

[adona1]

being able to play FFVII in full speed on the road is nothing short of amazing

Remind me not to drive near you ;)

Re:Thank God For Homebrew and Custom Firmware

[Threni]

> the PSP brought Homebrew and Emulators on the PSP to the mainstream

Sort of. One of the reasons I've not bought one is Sony's attitude to homebrew. Were I to buy one it would be for homebrew, and I'm not going to just pay and then hope that Sony doesn't stop me from doing that, so until they apologize for their stupid behaviour and promise to help homebrew development then I'm not interested.

Re:Thank God For Homebrew and Custom Firmware

[colmore]

There's a great Joel on Software about platforms and that in general you want to "commoditize your complements" meaning, if you sell hardware, you want to bend over backwards to make sure that there's cheap available software for you hardware (Mac makes this mistake again and again and again - they should have been working with Borland or someone since forever ago to make developing Mac ports of Windows software easy as pie) and if you sell software, you want cheap available hardware that runs your software. The early adopter crowd clearly was adding software functionality to Sony's hardware, Sony killed the software, and thus removed value from their hardware platform. It's as if Palm were to go in and kill backwards-compatibility for their latest OS, or if Windows 95 had decided not to include DOS compatibility.

$50 for a new video game is a price the market supports. Video games aren't the music industry, you aren't charging near $20 for something that everyone damn well knows is only worth $9 or $10, video games aren't going to see the kind of rampant piracy (that is kids with nothing BUT pirated CDs and MP3s) someone who buys the PSP for MAME is going to wind up buying some of your software too. And if you'd had some sense in pricing those UMD movies (also, TV series and cartoons would have been a better fit to the format - works for urban commuters) they'd have bought those too.

The PSP is just another in a long line of Sony's strategic missteps over the last few years. Treat the customer as your enemy, and let the lawyers do your strategic thinking.

Re:Thank God For Homebrew and Custom Firmware

[elrous0]

Yes, but Sony has fought that homebrew, tooth and nail, EVERY STEP OF THE WAY. They would rather have the company go bankrupt than to lose even the slightest bit of control. They are control freaks, and that is why their proprietary formats are a huge threat to consumers. Let them become the standard, and they will control it with an iron fist.

How the PSP is annoying let me count the ways

[tomstdenis]

1. Shorter battery life.

2. Load times

3. Dead pixel fiasco

4. Really limited games (no legacy library to pull from)

5. Big shiny screen, totally exposed for the scratching when put in a bag

6. Costs more than a DS

7. No homebrew, or not as well supported as GBA/DS homebrew

8. Lack of insight to use Pro memory stick slot for games [e.g. no need to spin up UMD], etc...

Sure the graphics are better than the DS, but so what? I don't spend enough time going "WOW MARIOS ASS IS SHINY" to care. I usually only play handhelds when I'm stuck somewhere [re: airports] and have absolutely nothing else to do, and eyeing the jailbait has gotten boring.

Tom

Re:How the PSP is annoying let me count the ways

[amohat]

All that and no mention of limited, expensive storage options? That right there is killing it more than anything else.

Besides, sounds like you need something with a camera, you perv. You know, just to spice things up.

Re:How the PSP is annoying let me count the ways

[Frogbert]

1. Shorter battery life.

Thats true

2. Load times

Yeah they are a bit slower then carts, it totally depends on the game though and is totally negated if you are booting games off a memory stick.

3. Dead pixel fiasco

My DS has a dead pixel too.

4. Really limited games (no legacy library to pull from)

Perhaps officially yes, but it is possible to convert ps1 games to psp

5. Big shiny screen, totally exposed for the scratching when put in a bag

This comes down to common sense, I keep mine in a little felt bag.

6. Costs more than a DS

It does more.

7. No homebrew, or not as well supported as GBA/DS homebrew

That's completely false Here is a database of PSP homebrew. Also this homebrew all works without DLDI patches and works with every flash card you put into the PSP. The DS scene is quite a bit different.

8. Lack of insight to use Pro memory stick slot for games [e.g. no need to spin up UMD], etc...

Officially yes, but with custom firmware though it is very simple to boot games from memory stick. I have both systems and I love them both, but the PSP is way more hacker friendly then the DS. Game wise I'd say they were about equal, with maybe 10 games on each system that are real gems.

Re:How the PSP is annoying let me count the ways

[The13thSin]

Hey now, aren't you suppose to take a side? I mean preferably the good and shining Nintendo's, but being an evil Sony's lacky will do as well...

Are we SlashDot posters turning into reasonable people now? What's next? Hot summer days during the winter seasons? Bush preventing World War III? Aliens eating my head?

Games, Movies, Music, Web browsing , etc...

[dunezone]

The PSP is a perfect example of a company cramming as many features into one product, marketing all these features, and then not following through. UMD failed because it was proprietary format that could only play on the PSP and most of the games that came out for the first year were ports of PS1 and PS2 games. As for a mp3 player the damn thing is too big, and I cant say much for the web browsing feature since I don't do web browsing on the go. As for trying to move onto the online downloading market with the PSP, their just beating a dead horse.

Sony's blunder.

[kinglink]

I'd like to say the PSP is Sony's biggest blunder, but it's not. The PS3 is turning out to be the titanic of the industry with all the bad press. But the PSP is a pretty massive blunder too. There's just too many bad moves to make the system viable. Here's a short list.

1. Bad Advertisements. Everyone talked about them, everyone said "WTF", everyone shook their head. Again this isn't an awful move, but combine it with the rest of this list and we got the "PSP".

2. Attacking the fans. People bought the PSP and homebrewed it. Sony closed the gaps. Now this isn't a bad thing but it forced people to make decisions between upgrading to buy games and leaving it at 1.5 to play homebrew. Overtime we've found ways to upgrade to 3.0+ software and play homebrew, however the sore feelings came early and lingered. When people were forced to make that choice and picked homebrew, then sony lost money right there. Games is all Sony's going to make money on.

3. UMDs. Not the worst idea ever but UMDs are clunky and a poor format. They are also slow. Notice that DS is a cartridge. Yeah they are outdated but they also have no load time, and little if any problems. Sony was smart enough to protect the disc instead of putting the laser right next to it, but the UMD is a failed concept that no one was going to buy. Blu-ray is slightly better, but forcing it on the consumer was bad voodoo.

4. Ambition, they made the best handheld, but it cost them a shit ton of money. The DS cost less, and sold for a profit (or close to it) It's similar to the PS3, 900 dollars or so for production of the version 1 consoles. Selling for 600. Why start a marathon a mile back from the starting line?

5. Ports. This is perhaps the most damning of them all. The PSP is the Playstation portable. The Gameboy is the game boy. Not the NES portable, not the Famicom portable. The Gameboy is it's own system. The PSP on the other hand is a suped up PSX or a downgraded PS2 but it wasn't it's own system. For that neurotic nerd who loves his PS2 so much he wants to buy the games a second time for his PSP so he can have it on the go great, but there's only a couple exclusives out of something like 200 games. Lumines? great. But there's just too much other crap that didn't work. It's great that I can now play burnout, Golf, or any other PS2 game on the go, but instead of the full experience off the DVD, I pay more money for downgraded graphics.

Consider that people play the DS while sitting next to full home entertainment systems, but I find it hard to believe people would do the same for the PSP. I know I wouldn't.

6. Not being nintendo. Let's get petty for a minute. Sony isn't nintendo. Sega, Neo geo, atari, and other all tried this before. The gameboy worked, everything else failed. Why? Who knows but challenging nintendo on their home court and you're going to be laughed off the field.

These are just some of the reasons the PSP failed and none of them are "that bad" but the wave of them keeps coming. They continue to produce port after port (next up Parapa the rapper, and Disgaea, and maybe FFT, and then .... You get the picture)

The PS3 is starting to turn this way, every month it seems there's a new bad story. Hell make that every week, and you'll see that Sony has a long way to turn both of these products into "success stories" but I think we are reaching the point where it's too little, too late.

Re:Sony's blunder.

[hidannik]

3. The UMD cartridge also does not protect the UMD disk nearly as well as it should. Last I checked, Sony was still refusing to acknowledge the problem of the cartridge's flimsiness. Here's my blog post on how to work around the most common UMD cartridge failure:

UMD Repair: Less Is More

Re:Sony's blunder.

[coaxial]

I'm not saying the the PSP isn't a blunder. It's definately a missed opportunity. It's a nice a piece of hardware, that falls just short of being something great, but your reasoning is all wrong.

1. Bad Advertisements. Everyone talked about them, everyone said "WTF", everyone shook their head. Again this isn't an awful move, but combine it with the rest of this list and we got the "PSP".

The early "Pass It On" ads were fine. The most recent "Find Me" is cool. I will grant you that the animated mice ads, and the the european red robots ads were fucked up. And the "black-white" posters were tone deaf (but then, they come by that honestly.)

The cheese ads didn't doom the handheld, or even harm it, because those ads came well after the PSP launch. Those ads were irrelevant to the fate of the PSP, because the PSP's fate was already sealed at launch. It was overpriced and crippled. If you don't get traction at launch, no amount of advertising, good or bad, will change your fate.

2. Attacking the fans. People bought the PSP and homebrewed it. Sony closed the gaps. Now this isn't a bad thing but it forced people to make decisions between upgrading to buy games and leaving it at 1.5 to play homebrew. Overtime we've found ways to upgrade to 3.0+ software and play homebrew, however the sore feelings came early and lingered. When people were forced to make that choice and picked homebrew, then sony lost money right there. Games is all Sony's going to make money on.

No one gives a shit about homebrew. And by "no one" I mean the 99% of the people that own a PSP or would consider purchasing a PSP. It's an infintesimly small segment of the market. Sure you may care. Your friends may care. But you and your friends probably also get your jollies recompiling your kernel or something equally hardcore geeky. You're not mainstream. This point is irrelevant.

3. UMDs. Not the worst idea ever but UMDs are clunky and a poor format. They are also slow. Notice that DS is a cartridge. Yeah they are outdated but they also have no load time, and little if any problems. Sony was smart enough to protect the disc instead of putting the laser right next to it, but the UMD is a failed concept that no one was going to buy. Blu-ray is slightly better, but forcing it on the consumer was bad voodoo.

You've got the right point, but for the wrong reasons. The PSP failed because of UMD. UMD was going to be the big content delivery system. You were going to buy movies and games on UMD and use the memory stick for only saving preferences and the like. UMD was doomed from the outset because no one was going to buy movies that could only work on a 4 inch screen. A kick-ass 4 inch screen mind you, but a 4 inch screen none the less. You would have though Sony would have learned there lesson after the Minidisk fiasco, but no. They suffer from terminal not-invented-here syndome.

If Sony had went with all internal storage. iPod like storage, then they would have had something. I mean 4 GB max from an overpriced flash card? No. For the same price you could get an iPod with like 5 times that much space when I considered a PSP a few years ago. Games are cool and all, but I wanted the whole portable media experience Sony was promissing, and not providing. Not that the iPod completely provides it either, but does give me music and video, albeit not on nearly as good of a screen.

5. Ports. This is perhaps the most damning of them all. The PSP is the Playstation portable. The Gameb

Re:Sony's blunder.

[Dogtanian]

No one gives a shit about homebrew. And by "no one" I mean the 99% of the people that own a PSP or would consider purchasing a PSP. It's an infintesimly small segment of the market. Sure you may care. Your friends may care. But you and your friends probably also get your jollies recompiling your kernel or something equally hardcore geeky. You're not mainstream. This point is irrelevant. Yes; Slashdotters often say things like "If Sony opened up the PSP, they'd make more money because me and one of my friends would buy one to mod". It's not simply that they're a small minority... but also that Sony hopes (or hoped) to make their money- I assume- via a stream of locked-in and Hollywood-licensed content, which they probably thought would be compromised by such a move.

In short, they might have considered the potential hacker/modder geek market, but given that opening up the PSP would also have scuppered the intended plan to gouge mainstream users with expensive content for their locked-in console, they probably dismissed it. They weren't selling the GP32.

Of course, that's probably what they wanted to do; it didn't quite play out like that.

IMHO, what Sony did wrong isn't *entirely* dissimilar; not restricting homebrew per se, but simply restricting the console, the content that can be played on it and what can be done with it. Joe Public *does* like that sort of stuff. In common with the article, I've said myself that if the PSP hadn't been artificially locked down, it'd be a great multimedia machine, all-round cool device, and fantastic value for money.

As it stands, it feels artificially restricted. Consider also the Mylo, Sony's overpriced WiFi-based communications device. It seems to have an awful lot of overlap in functionality with the PSP. If the PSP had been designed to work with a simple keyboard add-on, or even if they released a new model with one built-in, it could do this quite easily.

But no. The PSP is a games and (highly-restricted) multimedia console, and I suspect that Sony wanted to artificially differentiate the market in this way. So we get restricted PSP and stupid gadget proliferation.

Re:Sony's blunder.

[bogjobber]

You make a very big assumption that the PSP is a failure. The PSP didn't fail. It is a very successful console (selling 25 million worldwide according to Wikipedia). That's substantially less than Nintendo's 40 million worldwide for the DS (not even counting the GBA), but it hardly qualifies for a failure. Comparing it to the Neo-Geo Pocket and Lynx is ridiculous. The Game Gear is probably as accurate as you can get, because it was a successful handheld that was still a distant second to the Game Boy, however the PSP is much more successful than the Game Gear was. There will likely be more iterations of the PSP and we'll see where it goes from there. If anything Sony should be lauded for creating the first handheld that survived battling Nintendo heads-up.

The PS3 is also hardly to be considered a failure (no matter what stories you may read on /.) as it has sold over 3.5 million units in six months. Whether it passes the Wii/360 remains to be seen over the lifetime of the console, but by no means is it a failure.

Just because you don't like something and you didn't buy one doesn't mean it sucks. It definitely doesn't mean it is a failure. As far as either being "Sony's biggest blunder," as you seem to claim, remember that we're talking about Sony here. This is the company that lost (potentially) the entire home movie market and (actually) the entire portable audio player market.

Re:Sony's blunder.

[coaxial]

IMHO, what Sony did wrong isn't *entirely* dissimilar; not restricting homebrew per se, but simply restricting the console, the content that can be played on it and what can be done with it. Joe Public *does* like that sort of stuff. In common with the article, I've said myself that if the PSP hadn't been artificially locked down, it'd be a great multimedia machine, all-round cool device, and fantastic value for money.

That's DRM for you. Sony is a wierd company. They make both media and media devices. I'm convinced the music and movie divisions absolutely despise the consumer electronics division. Sony makes cool hardware.
Minidisk was a cool idea when it was introduced. Affordable recordable digitial media. But it was a pain in the ass to record to. The PSP is great piece of hardware, but restricted all to hell.

I like Sony's hardware, but I'm always wary of it, precisely because the the media division dictates the design.

Re:Sony's blunder.

[kinglink]

You're also misrepresenting the statistics here. The PSP is a blunder not because of buy-in, but because of tie-in. Games just arn't selling. GTA Liberty city stories, a game in a series that has sold 5 million on each version of the PS2 sold 1 million Gta Vice city stories sold 500K. The PSP is an expensive system as is the PS3, if they can't sell the games (and they arn't, at least not enough to be considered a success) that's a failure. The DS sells tons of games and comes at a lower production price where they can survive after sale or two of a DS game. The PSP needs to sell a significantly higher amount of games. The PS3 even more. You have between 100 - 300 dollar deficit at the begining of sales. That's between 2-5 games if they got all 60 dollars for a game which they don't. It's more like 10 dollars.

This is the way of the industry. Nintendo was smart here. If you a buy a Wii they are ahead. If you buy a game they are more ahead. However if you buy a PSP Sony's behind. There was a statistic that if sony sold 6 Million PS3s and no games they would be ripe for a takeover. So hide behind the 25 million handhelds sold but if you don't see at least triple that in games you're going to have a huge problem.

Re:Sony's blunder.

[poot_rootbeer]

The PSP is the Playstation portable. The Gameboy is the game boy. Not the NES portable, not the Famicom portable.

Really? Because I remember a flood of home console ports and adaptations appearing on every Nintendo portable to date, from "Super Mario Land" and "Castlevania: The Adventure" on the original Game Boy to "Super Mario Advance 4: Super Mario Bros 3" on the Advance to "Mario 64 DS" and "Diddy Kong Racing" on the DS.

I don't think the PSP has failed; it's still selling better than any non-Nintendo portable in history, and has an active enough install base to sustain it for years. But still, it could have been so much more than it is.

Re:Sony's blunder.

[bogjobber]

I'm not misrepresenting the statistics. Whenever you compare Sony products to Nintendo products, it as if you are assuming that it is a zero sum game. Just because Nintendo is more successful doesn't mean that the PSP/PS3 also can't be successful, even if the profits are more modest. Would you say that the N64 was a failure because the PSX wildy outsold it, or the Gamecube a failure because the PS2 outsold it by an even larger margin than the PSX/64? Of course not.

Add **pirate** unfriendly to the list!

[Anonymous Coward]

Most of the crying I see about this are from people who really want a free ride on PSP games, even if they don't flat out admit it....

Re:Add **pirate** unfriendly to the list!

[PygmySurfer]

My PSP is actually incredibly pirate-friendly.

Course, I still have v1.5 firmware on it.

Calling you out on #7

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you kidding me? The PSP has some of the best homebrew out there! Not just emulation (with snes, gba, and earlier playable), but with other apps, like PSPradio, which allows you to stream shoutcast music to the PSP over its Wi-Fi connection.

In addition to that, there are features that Sony has tried to put in (PS1 emulation) that people have hacked completely open.

They can still recover with a new tack on things

[1mck]

All of my friends own PSP's, and I haven't ponied up for one yet, but I'm totally blown away at what these things can do. It struck me that this ,IMHO, is the future of portable computers!

The screen resolution is incredible, and the menus are really cool, and it has it's own browser (proprietary), and it does everything that I would want in a portable computer except for office software...I really think if they were to do a slight paradigm shift, and make it both a portable game console, multimedia centre, and a laptop replacement with all the standard office software (Open Office), and they could even incorporate a cell phone into it with a blue tooth ear piece, then they'll have the winner that they've been looking for.

Wouldn't be great to just have this thing on your hip, and have your entire office/game system/multimedia/cell phone right there? I really think it would kill everything out there that are trying to do just this, but of course this are just my thoughts.

MOD PARENT -1 TROLL

[Anonymous Coward]

2) Not a problem in most GOOD games. (does anyone really care if some piece of shit wrestling game takes forever to load? I don't)
3) Virtually non-existent these days, overblown at launch.
4) There are still a lot of really good games, even more than DS in truth.
5) Slip case, problem solved.
6) Oh really? You mean a far, far more powerful device costs a whole $45 more? In fact, I'd say it's well, well worth the extra bit of cash.
7) Are you retarded? The homebrew scene on PSP is huge! It's way, way larger than DS/GBA, and with the higher system capabilities you see some pretty amazing shit, like a full speed CPS2 emulator.
9) Graphics contribute greatly to the overall experience of the game.

Re:MOD PARENT -1 TROLL

[ElleyKitten]

2) It's not just shitty wrestling games. Valkyrie Profile and other games take forever to load too. 4) It depends on what you think is good. Going with Metacritic.com as a metric, there's over a 100 games with a score of 80 or above (I'm counting GBA, since the DS plays GBA games) while the PSP has 46, and at least one of those is a movie. 5) Yeah, spending $10 or $20 for a stupid case isn't annoying at all. 6) FINALLY. It was almost twice as much as the DS for the longest time. ($250 vs $130) 7) Maybe it would be more helpful if Sony wasn't constantly fighting it? 9) Not everyone thinks graphics are the best part of a game. If one system has the games they like they'll buy that over the system with the prettier graphics.

Let me debunk a few things

[vlad_petric]

3. Dead pixel fiasco.

Is one dead pixel per screen such a big deal?? I have a dead pixel on mine and only notice it on completely white backgrounds.

4. Really limited games (no legacy library to pull from)

Are you talking about PSP from 2 years ago? There are quite a few high quality games for the PSP (8.5+ score on gamespot.com/psp). My favorites: Daxter, Burnout Revenge, Metal Gear Acid I and II. I can also argue that DS games are graphics-limited (yes I know, gameplay is more important)

5. Big shiny screen, totally exposed for the scratching when put in a bag

So get a screen protector. Big deal ...

6. Costs more than a DS

30$. For which you get a considerably more powerful CPU & 3D accelerator. Look at screenshots from DS and PSP games.

Ideology aside (Sony is teh evil, Nintendo rocks, graphics is not important), PSP is a pretty decent portable. Sure, it has its issues (e.g., UMD), but it's far from being the failure that the mass media portrays it to be.

Re:Let me debunk a few things

[tomstdenis]

My first PSP had about 35 dead pixels all over. Circuit City refused to replace it since it was still "playable." I had to mail it off to Sony Canada for a replacement, which had about 7 dead pixels. I just gave up at that point and put up with it. I was hardly the only one with that problem.

As for the rest I guess it's a matter of opinion. For the most part I really don't give a rats ass for the new games. Aside from Wii most games I've seen for the new consoles are just shinier rehashes of last seasons games. SMB1 is 22 years old and I still play it. Will you still play burnout revenge in 22 years?

Tom

Re:Let me debunk a few things

[toejam316]

dont forget, its actually possible to completely replace the UMD drive with say a CF or SD Reader. Cheap storage is doable for anyone who can wield a soldering iron or knows someone who can.

Re:Let me debunk a few things

[bogjobber]

Aside from Wii most games I've seen for the new consoles are just shinier rehashes of last seasons games.

Most games on the Wii are also rehashes of last season's games. It's just that now you play by swinging your arms around!

I actually kinda like the Wii, so I'm not just bashing. Most launches suck because companies think it's too risky to launch entirely new titles. Couple that with Nintendo's tendency to stick with established characters and you have a pretty bland console other than the (very fun) novelty of the Wiimote.

Re:Let me debunk a few things

[tomstdenis]

I can't speak to the Wii as I don't have one [stupid low stock] and my friend who has one only has two games [cheap bastard]. I don't think Wii sports is a rehash of anything they put out before. But yeah there are already rehash games out there [e.g. zelda, medal of honour, etc...].

But part of the appeal of the Wii is that you're using a new interface to play the games. i like the idea of getting off the couch to play Wii games. Much more fun than just sitting there with a 360 controller.

Tom

Re:Let me debunk a few things

[Anonymous Coward]

6. Costs more than a DS

30$. For which you get a considerably more powerful CPU & 3D accelerator. Look at screenshots from DS and PSP games.

Origianally the PSP was 250 where the DS was 150. When both units had lowered their prices, it was $130 to $200, but to make the price drop on the PSP, several items had been removed from the packaging. With the PSP's latest price drop, it's still $130 for a DS, and 170 for a PSP, plus the cost of a memory card. The original DS pricing is still cheaper than than the current PSP.

Frankly, there's no way you can win an argument on cost. The DS is much more bang for your buck (unless you're only looking at playing UMD movies, in which case, go with a portable dvd player).

Re:Let me debunk a few things

[Just Some Guy]

4. Really limited games (no legacy library to pull from)

Are you talking about PSP from 2 years ago? There are quite a few high quality games for the PSP (8.5+ score on gamespot.com/psp). My favorites: Daxter, Burnout Revenge, Metal Gear Acid I and II. I can also argue that DS games are graphics-limited (yes I know, gameplay is more important)

No, I think he meant the incredibly limited selection. Even if no DS games were ever released, you'd still have the thousands of GBA games that work perfectly on it.

if you don't play new games

[vlad_petric]

Then why bother with a new system :)?

Sure, it's a matter of opinion, but I generally have no problem with game iterations. Games are so complex that it's difficult to get them right the first time. Most of the games I love are at least version/iteration 2.

Re:if you don't play new games

[tomstdenis]

Potential? I bought the PSP because I thought it would sport some really kick ass games, but the launch sucked and I lost interest. I was also making decent coin at the time so it wasn't a huge investment.

Tom

Homebrew not as good as the DS? I think not...

[DavidKlemke]

I keep hearing that the PSP doesn't have as good Homebrew as the DS. Well that's just plain not true, for example here's my source for all things PSP and homebrew: http://forums.qj.net/f-qjnet-sony-psp-forums-48.ht ml/ There are at least 180 people on this forum at any given time and there are THOUSANDS of homebrew applications in the files section. I'm sorry but all this DS fanfare about a less than lively homebrew scene just don't have their facts straight. Personally I bought my PSP early and got straight into the hacking scene as soon as I could. I've never been left feeling that I wasn't getting my moneys worth, and I've even bought a couple UMD movies (a 4 hour bus trip to Sydney can get mighty boring and sometimes ripping isn't an option). In fact I don't think I've ever come across something that I've wanted to do with my PSP and haven't been able to do. Here's just a short list of things I've done over the past couple of years using homebrew: - NES/SNES/N64 emulators - Universal IR Remote Controller - Remote access of my desktop at home over wireless or the internet - Streaming video and audio in real time over my wireless network and over the internet - Personal Organizer and calendar This is in addition to all the stuff that comes default these days with the base firmware. The PSP is a great platform and it's really worth every dollar you'll spend on it. Problem is it's not as cheap as a DS and the proprietary-ness of the platform seems to irk all the slashdotters. The DS might be selling more but that doesn't necessarily mean it's a better platform.

Re:Homebrew not as good as the DS? I think not...

[Anonymous Coward]

Top 5 PSP Homebrew
1) PSPVNC (wireless VNC Viewer)
2) PSPRadio (streaming radio stations)
3) PimpStreamer (streams your videos)
4) PSPlayerMT (watch avi/mp4/mkv)
5) PSPLink (internet browser w/o the memory limitation)

BUZZWORD ALERT!!!! HONK HONK HONK

[Anonymous Coward]

paradigm shift

Pity Sony doesn't want you to play it.

[Anonymous Coward]

> I keep hearing that the PSP doesn't have as good Homebrew as the DS. Well that's just plain not true

Oh, I'm sure it has great homebrew. The main problem is that Sony doesn't want anyone to play it, and keeps "fixing" the firmware with each new game.

Re:Pity Sony doesn't want you to play it.

[DavidKlemke]

That's true, but if you're running Dark Alex's firmware then you're getting all the lovely new features of the firmware whilst still maintaining a homebrew friendly platform. I'm currently running 3.10 OE and I can play the latest games and homebrew without incident.

hmm

[nomadic]

Is it really losing out that badly to the DS? I don't have either, and I don't know the sales numbers, but I see people out on the streets with PSPs far more often than I see them with DSes.

Re:hmm

[toddhunter]

Lets look at the figures (vgchartz)

DS
16.39m Japan
11.88m Americas
12.80m Others

PSP
5.43m Japan
8.29m Americas
7.59m Others

The DS is nearly double the PSP but a huge chunk of this is Japan. You might conclude that although the DS is doing better, the PSP has still done very well.

Re:hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

You have to keep in mind that the gap is widening though. Right now, the DS is selling about twice as fast as the PSP in the US. In Japan, the DS is selling at least twice as many units each week and in some weeks it's selling as much as five times as many units as the PSP.

SD is proprietary too

[tepples]

It uses Memory Stick, which is a Sony proprietary format. You can buy third party versions, but it is obvious that they pay a licensing fee to Sony. Compare prices for 2 GB memory stick to 2 GB SD both from Lexar, for example. The competing product (Nintendo DS with SuperCard accessory) uses Secure Digital, which is an SD Association proprietary format. You can buy third party versions, but it is obvious that they pay a licensing fee to SD Association. Compare prices for 2 GB SD to 2 GB CF from the same manufacturer, for example.

Re:SD is proprietary too

[coaxial]

Too lazy to type I see.

Re:SD is proprietary too

[fbjon]

I just compared a SanDisk SD with a CF, same flash speed. SD: 32 euro, CF: 35 euro. It's been this way for a while now too.

You fail. :)

Re:SD is proprietary too

[LKM]

Last time I checked (which was last week), Memory Sticks cost a little less than twice as much as SD cards for the same capacity. The comparison to CF is kind of pointless, as the CF cards are much bigger and used for different things than SD or MS cards, and the price difference isn't as big as with Sony's proprietary thingies (of which, by the way, there exist about five different, sometimes incompatible versions - yes, I own Memory Sticks of almost all versions, and I can't use the old ones with my new Sony stuff, while my old SD and CF cards work perfectly well with new gear).

PSP firmware cat-and-mouse

[tepples]

The PSP has some of the best homebrew out there! Even with the firmware version on the PSP units being shipped to stores? Sony regularly updates the PSP firmware, and each new version closes a hole that homebrew had been using to execute. Nintendo, on the other hand, hasn't even tried to block the NoPass + SLOT-2 homebrew solutions such as SuperCard+SuperKey that have been around for nearly a year or the newer SLOT-1-only solutions such as R4. You can get a PSP with a 1 GB Memory Stick PRO Duo card for $250, or you can get a DS + R4 + 1 GB microSD card for $175.

Re:PSP firmware cat-and-mouse

[Applekid]

IIRC, the original Passme designs that enabled homebrew on the DS didn't work with ones that came out a year after launch when Nintendo was putting a new firmware on them.

How to explain the inability to stop newer homebrew kits? Thing is DS's have to have some contacts bridged in order to flash them. It's obviously not intended to be flashed except when being repaired. Contrast to the PSP's more aggressive flashing approach. Nintendo can't dispatch a firmware update, not even over WiFi, to fix those problems. The platform remains static and external influences which are allowed to evolve do and take complete advantage.

Nintendo has no love of homebrew. If someone lets themselves believe otherwise they are just setting themselves up for heartbreak.

Doesn't PSP homebrew need old PSP and old GTA?

[tepples]

The homebrew scene on PSP is huge! Doesn't PSP homebrew require a PSP that doesn't ship with 3.10 or newer firmware, which by now means a used PSP? And doesn't it also require a used copy of Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories (an M-rated game) from its first printing?

Re:Doesn't PSP homebrew need old PSP and old GTA?

[ZakuSage]

While it's true firmware 3.03 requires GTA in order to become hacked, firmwares 2.71 and 2.80 (which are still somewhat plentiful) can be downgraded just by using a exploit in one of the photo libraries. Additionally, new exploits are found every now and then that make more PSPs hackable.

Still, despite that homebrew on the console is very plentiful as the grandparent pointed out.

too much psp hate

[stlthVector]

I guess I'm the only person on /. who doesn't think the PSP is a failure. I also don't understand the comparisons to the DS. They both play games, that's it. The PSP is a mobile entertainment device. The DS plays games that do not require any advanced hardware. The PSP plays home console quality games, video, music, provides some internet access, makes a great photo viewer, and more. I love sports games and the PSP as an excellent library of sports games. I show them to my friends and their jaws drop. I always get comments like "that looks better than on my ps2" or "that looks like the xbox version".

I don't see how you can compare the two on price. If you choose to, that's you're choice. I guess it doesn't seem to make much sense to me.

It boils down to what you want. If you like the games for the ds, buy a ds!!! Don't buy a PSP! If you like the games for the PSP, and there are a ton for a non-nintendo portable, probably at least 300 now, buy a PSP. If you want something you can rip dvd's and copy them to inexpensive flash media for cheap mobile viewing, get a PSP (I got a 4GB msduopro for $70, hardly expensive). If you want a photo viewer, music player, and a tool for light web browsing, get a psp.

Both the ds and the psp have their place I think. I don't understand all the psp hate. If you like to hate, then go for it. If you want a ds, buy one.

Most people who I have heard talk about PSP haven't played with it much if at all. Check it out if you haven't. Give it a chance. It's been an amazing device for my uses.

Re:too much psp hate

[Ash-Fox]

The PSP plays home console quality games, video, music, provides some internet access, makes a great photo viewer, and more.

I do this all on my Nintendo DS lite, I just bought a Slot-1 Supercard and I got everything -- I can dump my games to the device so I don't need to carry so many cartridges with me, I've got the entire BSG series on one of my micro SD cards (that go into the supercard), there is a picture viewer, it works, but I don't use it... Hell, I even got Linux running on thing.

I actually even found homebrew games I liked playing which surprised me. Additionally, I've taken a interest in developing homebrew applications on it, although I haven't got that far yet.

I don't really know what's great about the PSP, but so far you haven't really given me a good reason to look into it. I'm also somewhat against buying Sony hardware for the simple fact... I've never seen Sony game hardware last long.

My only gripe with the Nintendo DS is that it doesn't support WPA.

Re:too much psp hate

[CronoCloud]

I do this all on my Nintendo DS lite, I just bought a Slot-1 Supercard and I got everything

Yes, but with the PSP they're all built in, including WPA support. No extra hardware needed.

Re:too much psp hate

[Ash-Fox]

Yes, but with the PSP they're all built in, including WPA support. No extra hardware needed.

Did cost me less in whole than a PSP though and I get a reasonable assurance that the hardware won't fail too easily on me just from Nintendo's track record.

Re:MOD PARENT MINUS 1 TROLL

[pete6677]

Betamax dominated the VCR market as well. In the very beginning, that is.

Re: :-)

[MagusSlurpy]

. . . and have absolutely nothing else to do, and eyeing the jailbait has gotten boring. "Boring?" Dude. Seriously. What the fuck is wrong with you?

Price`

[Anonymous Coward]

The PSP has the same problem that the PS3 has: TOO DAMN EXPENSIVE!!!

There is a reason that the competition is selling better because they are at least $100 cheaper and have more games.

I like my PSP.

[John Pfeiffer]

Let me start by saying that I have a PSP1000G1CW (For the uninitiated, that's an original Japanese Ceramic White Gigapack), and I use it every day.

I would like to address the more common 'issues' people seem to have with the PSP...

The first being storage... You are right, it doesn't have 30-40gb of internal storage. This is something I have NEVER understood about the iPod and similar devices. My music collection is somewhere in the neighborhood of 200+ gigabytes. Yet, I'm never listening to more than 5 different albums in a given week. (This week, it is 'MY FOOT', 'Good Dreams', 'Fool on the Planet', 'Another morning, Another pillows', and 'FLCL Original Soundtrack 3', all by 'the pillows'.) Compressed with AAC, I have little problem carrying this around on my 1gb memorystick.

Why do you NEED to carry THIRTY GIGABYTES of music with you at all times? Nine times out of ten, if your plane crashes, you DIE. So don't worry about getting stranded on a desert island without tunes, okay?

My biggest gripe though, is with people attacking the UMD format. Complaining that it is proprietary strikes me as particularly stupid... Proprietary? As opposed to cartridges? I'm sorry, were they supposed to make it 3x the size and give it a DVD-ROM drive? Get over it. UMD Video was a mistake, but that was just Sony's movie division trying to capitalize... (In Japan, I've seen just as many UMD Video discs packaged WITH their DVD counterparts with little premium paid, so I think the whole 'make-you-buy-everything-twice' shtick was mostly western capitalism at work.)

The PSP is a fine multifunction device once you install a custom firmware... Now, I know someone's going to be like "So, it's no good unless you hack it, huh?" That statement is equal parts truth and loaded bullshit. Sony doesn't want people pirating games or running their own software... YES. Personally I think it's bad corporate policy to sell someone what amounts to a handheld computer, then tell them not to run anything on it...but hey, I imagine there's a REASON I'm not on the board of SCEI or SCEA.

With my PSP handy, with only a 1gb memorystick, I have never been bored. Between bookr for reading text files or PDFs, videos, music, and the vast library of great Japanese games at my fingertips (Not to mention all my old favorites via emulation), there has yet to be an instance where my PSP didn't give me something to do. Sony created something that, when properly utilized, becomes indispensable.

Typically, my PSP is loaded with one game UMD in the drive, two in my Hori Portable Style Pouch, 1-5 more game ISOs on the memstick depending on size, music, the latest episodes of all my shows, a bunch of ebooks, and some classic Super Famicom games in my emulator. (Granted, sometimes 1gb of space is a little stressed by all this, but a 4gb stick like I plan to buy soon is only $50)

Beyond its original purposes, a truly creative geek can find limitless uses for the PSP. I have my home network set up so I can download pre-packaged music, game ISOs, and videos, directly to my PSP through a web portal on my LAN. (As well as being able to stream any video directly from my computer to my PSP with Pimpstreamer...even stuff in 1080p) I can even use my PSP to control Media Player Classic via a web interface, or control the lights in the house...even check my caller ID. I don't even have the Chotto Shot camera or GPS unit yet and my PSP is more useful than any other handheld device I've ever owned, and has better games than some home consoles.

Sure, it doesn't hold 30gb of music or videos... But hey, the screen is about the SIZE of an iPod, and with games like Disgaea and the countless other great games I play on a regular basis, I have no complaints.

So I guess what I'm saying is... Could someone please explain Sony's failure to me in large type, with diagrams? Is it that the PSP is maybe TOO useful for a $280 device? Or is it supposed to be able to make me toast in the morning? I'M CONFUSED.

Re:I like my PSP.

[CronoCloud]

I like my PSP.

Me too, and pretty much for the same reaons, though I don't have a homebrew friendly firmware now. (I upgraded my PSP for the Flash support and RSS)

I do wish sony would be open to homebrew applications, the PSP is an anomaly in this regard, the PS2/PS3 have LInux, so why not allow homebrew. Either say, "we don't support this stuff use at your own risk" or makd deals with homebrew developers "hey we've got a PDF reader, we support this" or "here's a version of nethack, that we authorize"

And I'm still waiting for the Chotto shotto to be released in the US.

One problem I think Sony has with the PSP is that people don't know what the thing is capable of even with just the official firmware, because the marketing for the thing sucks.

Re:I like my PSP.

[mshurpik]

>I can even use my PSP to control Media Player Classic via a web interface, or control the lights in the house...even check my caller ID.

OK you had me going there for a second :)

People who actually own home automation systems are far too wealthy and ignorant to be bothered with a game console.

Re:I like my PSP.

[iainl]

I quite like my PSP as well, but it's a Gran Turismo player. Which first required doing all sorts of scary stuff to it.

I made the upgrade from a 4Gb iPod Mini to a 30Gb full-size one, because we're not all alike when it comes to music. You say you've got five albums by one band on your machine, and that's enough? Do you really know you're not going to have the urge to listen to someone else later today? If so, then you'll be fine. I, however, like being surprised by what the random feature chooses, I like being able to choose to put on that A. R. Kane record I've not listened to in years, because someone happened to mention something that triggered the memory.

PSPs are not selling as well as DSes because fewer people want to play the games on the move, and the portable video market is tiny in comparison to the portable game one.

Re:I like my PSP.

[John Pfeiffer]

Haha. I wish. My father got his hands on the original X10 (No relation to the pop-under assholes who began using the technology for evil) hardware back in the day with a Macintosh interface... I still have most of it, and bought some new modules like seven years ago. :P (And the caller ID thing is a service of verizon, a web interface. They also have a windows app that pops it up on your desktop)

Re:I like my PSP.

[mshurpik]

Well you're a rare hacker breed. Most contractors in electronics wear ponytails and smoke pot on the way to the client's house. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but, they're not serious or educated. And half these guys don't have websites.

IMO you're in a position to make money if you choose to advertise.

Re:I like my PSP.

[poot_rootbeer]

Why do you NEED to carry THIRTY GIGABYTES of music with you at all times?

Why does anyone NEED to carry ANY music with them? We don't. But we LIKE to carry music with us so that we can listen to the music we want to listen to whenever and wherever we wish.

Your listening habits involve a small number of full albums that stay in rotation for a while. Mine don't. I like to put my entire collection on shuffle and be surprised at what comes up next. The more of my music collection I can have with me, the more fun I have.

My biggest gripe though, is with people attacking the UMD format.

I also don't think Sony had any choice BUT to go with UMD. Supporting full-size DVD media would have been even worse for battery life and made the thing clunky and un-pocketable. Building in a hard drive and allowing consumers to transfer movies from their computers would have been an explicit condonation of DVD ripping, and the Entertainment division would not stand for that. The Sony engineers did the best they could with UMD, which inherits many of the benefits of its MiniDisc precursor, but also all of its drawbacks. UMD is good -- but still not as good as solid-state cartridges for a portable console.

Re:I like my PSP.

[CronoCloud]

but still not as good as solid-state cartridges for a portable console.

UMD is better than ROM cart in one important way, the same way the PSone game CD was superior to the N64 cartridge: capacity.

the DS ROM cartridge only holds 128MB.

UMDs hold 1.8GB, roughly 14 times as much data.

Re:They can still recover with a new tack on thing

[Anonymous Coward]

Nokia tried this with their ngage phones, but failed miserably.

Re:They can still recover with a new tack on thing

[Turn-X Alphonse]

This is slashdot, you have to pay the editors for advertisements here.

Re: :-)

[tomstdenis]

Jailbait gets boring when one of the following occurs:

1. She hooks up with her BF

2. She hooks up with parents, unless mother is hot too, who's with me? MENTAL HIGH FIVE! SNAP!

3. She turns into a he.

4. She notices and points you out to security. Unless, security is hot too, yeah boyyyyy HIGH FIVE!

5. You're not a pathetic loser and have your own GF or SO who fulfills the needs thus making Jailbait both inappropriate and redundant.

Tom

Nothing about Music?!

[Anonymous Coward]

I see everyone here seems to have failed to mention the fact that the PSP PISSES ME OFF!!!
Music playlists? HA! M3U playlists can only be created if all the music you want in your playlist is IN THAT FOLDER. How retarded is that? If I want to make multiple playlists, I have to sacrifice my memory stick space. Fuck that...
And after buying this, I can't afford to get myself an iPod.
BUUUT it does have nice homebrews and the graphics are nice. ....i guess.

All in all, I still love my DS more. It touches me in ways only my gaming computer can.

A very useful device

[mhocker]

Personally, I have a PSP and, while I initially used it for games, I now use it almost exclusively as a video player. And in that capability, it's great.

I convert videos using the excellent and inexpensive PSPWare program, which takes a little bit of time but reduces the resolution to exactly the PSP's screen and lowers the filesize to about 140 MB per hour. That means with a 2 GB memory stick, you've got plenty to watch. The whole process can be automated as well.

On the battery life front, I've never understood the complaints about batteries. It lasts for about 6 hours at medium brightness and with a cheap USB-5V power adaptor, I charge it at the same time I sync it.

The one physical limitation is how to hold it, a common problem with all video players. I bought a Logitech case which folds backwards and holds the PSP so that it can sit on an airline tray table and be tilted properly.

With a nice pair of Bose noise-cancelling headsets, this thing is my constant companion on flights, because you can even watch it with a meal tray on your table. I often get people asking about it - it seems to particularly intrigue flight attendants.

As for games, I bought four of them but then basically gave up. I keep the Namco classics UMD in the drive but rarely play it. The problem with the PSP (its fatal flaw for gaming) is that it has really lousy ergonomics. The little nubbin thing is useless as an analog controller (and there is only one of them - why?), the shoulder buttons are not very easy to use and if you have large hands like I do, you get cramps from using it too long. I enjoyed Lumines for a while, got annoyed with GTA LCS without the 2nd analog controller, and have actually forgotten what the other game was.

It seems to do several web-related functions as well, but it always runs out of memory or seems to be straining that little processor quite hard, so I've never used these much. I could possibly see using it with my Slingbox but that's not Sony's way.

With all that said, do I feel like I wasted my money? No. It's a darn fine video player and I will be happy to use it that way until it breaks. I've logged many hours watching it that way and fully expect to log many more.

Re:A very useful device

[Darktyco]

If you think that Bose headphones are a good buy I have hard time taking most of your post very seriously. Although I have to say, the PSP as a movie device (using ripped movies and not UMD of course) does sound very cool. How is battery life when playing a movie from the memory stick?

Re: :-)

[Anonymous Coward]

Who the fuck let The Todd in here?

Mod parent troll... I'll agree.

[Banarak]

1. Charge it right, and if you are ever away from an electrical socket for more then 10 hours... and you don't look into extra batteries/accessories (they have a solar charger for gods sake)... you've got a small point. 2. Load times aren't bad on "most" games. If they are? Well, I'm sure you've met Dark Alex before. Load times aren't an issue. If you want to keep complaining... have you tried Sonic the Hedgehog on ANY system? 3. You just made my morning here. Every console, and every game launches without problems in your dreamworld reality, right? I got mine on launch, and *STILL* haven't had one dead pixel. And the poor thing has taken more abuse then an earthquake dector at this point. 4. PS1 dosen't count, right? I guess 2 generations ago dosen't count for "legacy". Let's ignore homebrew/emulation for now, as playing Atari 2600 must not validate "legacy", since it requires about 50 braincells and trust to install. 5. Don't keep it unprotected near "your bag" and you won't have a problem. I've got 3 cases - the one IT CAME WITH (value pack, yes I know some people don't have there.), A leather belt pouch (perfect) and an over the shoulder carry-all (which again, perfect) and I haven't had a scratch I didn't mistakenly put there myself. And the screen is still damn near perfect. 6. And you don't have the graphics or capability out of the box as you do with a DS either. I do own both. Can you soft-mod a DS like you can a PSP? $129 vs $169 right now, and I'm very glad I purchased *BOTH*. 7.Google search for PSP QJ homebrew and google search for DS QJ homebrew. Because I *KNOW* you didn't look either up before you made this.... comment. 8. The original memory stick shipped with it was 32mb (!!!). You want to plan caching for that, with saved games, with the option for video, with the option for music? OF COURSE IT DOES NOT USE IT. Even if I have a 4gb card, do you think I want the possibility of corruption while it uses it for a cache drive?? Sony made a wise choice here, and there are many other ways you can use your card to speed up load times now. You just posed this to comment how much you love a shiny mario ass. I know you did. The rest dosen't make sense.

A little early to be a failure.

[LWATCDR]

"The PS3 is also hardly to be considered a failure (no matter what stories you may read on /.) as it has sold over 3.5 million units in six months. "
Sorry but it isn't just what I read on Slashdot. I got my Wii finally, when I was getting a second controller the woman at the local Walmart was telling me, "I just don't understand. When they first came out everybody was so excited about the PS3. Now they just sit on the shelf and we can not keep the Wiis in stock." I suggest you take a look at the sales figures and the store shelves. The PS3 is selling fewer units than the PS2! Not a failure yet since it is still a new console but I am sure it's sales are disappointing.

Lack of DS firmware cat-and-mouse

[tepples]

IIRC, the original Passme designs that enabled homebrew on the DS didn't work with ones that came out a year after launch when Nintendo was putting a new firmware on them. Nintendo has had one patch (called v4 in the community) to break homebrew compatibility. Sony has had at least a dozen.

How to explain the inability to stop newer homebrew kits? Thing is DS's have to have some contacts bridged in order to flash them. It's obviously not intended to be flashed except when being repaired. How does this limitation stop Nintendo from shipping updated firmware on each newly manufactured DS, as it did with v4?

Nintendo has no love of homebrew. Which hardware manufacturer that markets in the United States does have a love of homebrew?

Re:Lack of DS firmware cat-and-mouse

[Caffeinate]

Which hardware manufacturer that markets in the United States does have a love of homebrew? Gamepark Holdings. Although their marketing in the US is not exactly widespread.

Re:Lack of DS firmware cat-and-mouse

[Anonymous Coward]

GP2X?

You mean the folks that don't honor the GPL with their version of linux and linux based utilities? I'd prefer a proprietary system that needs shady hacking to circumvent to a homebrew friendly system that only pretends to be open and dishonors those whose hard work made it possible.

It has a relatively big screen

[ubrgeek]

Big deal - The content of that screen is damn near impossible to see outdoors. I've tried playing with every setting and when the sun is out, you can barely see it. I've tried games, I've tried movies, but no luck. I figured I'd play it in the car when I'm a passenger and once the sun comes up, it goes back in the bag. To me, that's a big deal. Sure, proprietary memory is the much suck, as is the stupid game disc format, but more than that, I want to be able to see what I'm playing/watching ...

Where's homebrew on PSP 3.10?

[tepples]

That's completely false Here is a database of PSP homebrew. Also this homebrew all works without DLDI patches and works with every flash card you put into the PSP. The DS scene is quite a bit different. DS has DLDI differences, but PSP has firmware differences. Where is homebrew for a new PSP that came with firmware later than 3.03 out of the box? Where is homebrew for a new PSP that came with firmware > 2.80 without having to buy an M-rated game that is no longer manufactured?

Officially yes, but with custom firmware though it is very simple to boot games from memory stick. But how does one install the custom firmware on a newer PSP?

No homebrew on PSP firmware 3.10 thru 3.40

[tepples]

Google search for PSP QJ homebrew I found Wikipedia:

There is currently no way to run homebrew on the offical firmwares 3.10, 3.11, 3.30 or 3.40, as all previous TIFF and GTA exploits have been blocked.

Re:No homebrew on PSP firmware 3.10 thru 3.40

[Banarak]

The devil is in the details...

You got me. I should have clarified and said "Google search for PSP QJ custom firmware". You *can* run homebrew on the higher firmwares, but the "official" firmwares listed can't run it. Just the custom ones.

However, it's just a matter of time. I thought it was still possible to downgrade 3.10 (noobz?), not sure of the others, but I'll take the point that I should have clarified a bit better.

When will Sony learn?

[mjhacker]

Back in the day, I had high hopes for the PSP. My wife was a staunch supporter of it, and laughed at me when I told her that the DS was going to do better than the PSP. I realized long before she did that Sony's proprietary format, high cost and low flexibility was going to murder the PSP. Our PSP still gets a fair amount of use (only to play ports of classic PS RPGs, ie Valkarie Profile, and FFT when it comes out), but we never go anywhere for an extended period of time without our DSes.

An affordable system, affordable games, excellent library (GBA backwards compatibility helps), long battery life, and innovative features have helped the DS achieve something that many thought 3 years ago would be impossible - complete dominance over the PSP.

how has sony got into this situation?

[The_Rook]

that's because since acquiring cbs/columbia pictures, the media side has taken firm control of sony and nothing gets made unless it passes muster with the media division.

for example, the minidisc was saddled with format killing drm because that's how sony music wanted it. it's an excellent example of what consumer electronics would be like if the media companies had their way. contrast that to the sony of the 1970s that could make the the betamax without having to first ask permission of the movie division.

it's a bizarre turnaround to what the purchase of columbia pictures was supposed to be: a captive library of audio and video material used to drive sony's next consumer electronics innovation into the market. when the media division made more money than the elctronics division for a few years, the media executives were able to take over. furthermore, crippling the consumer electronics division's ability to make audio and video devices that customers might want to buy also prevents the consumer electronics division from being successful enough to take back control of sony. in a way sony is a microcosm of the conflict between the consumer electronics industry and the media industry.

it seems like the last really runaway consumer electronics hit sony had was the original playstation. made because sony executives were annoyed at having to kowtow to nintendo's licensing requirements, as i recall, the original playstation was designed to be easy to develop for and the company even made a hobbiest development kit. the original playstation may have been that last piece of electronics sony made that came, unmodified, from the engineering side. i expect all that drm and pita development on the playstation 2 and later all comes at the 'request' of the media executives who only want their customers to be passive consumers and not users.

Sony just isn't good enough right now.

[MMInterface]

I'm a PSP owner. Its a beautiful device for playing portable games, nothing more. The screen is big, the graphics are good, and if Nintendo games aren't your style its pretty much your only option. Thats being said Sony is a joke when it comes to portable digital audio/video players and online services. Even Microsoft is far superior to them in those categories so their chance at creating an all in one device that competed with the iPod and the DS was laughable. I wouldn't even call this a missed opportunity because Sony just doesn't have it in them to make the PSP that should have been. The only thing that will change this is if they learn from their failure and make some big changes.

strange world of sony - psp and the mylo

[speculatrix]

OK, a tad off topic maybe, but bear with me... the PSP was so potentially so cool, and could have been so great. If it'd had a touch screen, or some clever matching keyboard peripheral. If it had an accessory port or bluetooth so you could have used it for GPS navigation (or even built-in). Slightly crippled features to lock down media playback.

and then there's the mylo. again, it initially sounded like an interesting idea. especially since it runs linux. but then it's a closed system, no 3rd party apps only those blessed by Sony. firmware locked down. no touchscreen. not quite enough rom and ram. doesn't feel like an expensive product when picked up yet is quite expensive.

where does Sony *do* their market research? well, I can answer that. Having bought a Sony ultraportable laptop (TX2, but not at full price, and with full awareness of how to run linux on it. just so you know!), and been on the very occasionally useful club vaio forums, I see that Sony somehow persuade their customers that they form a sort of an elite, they somehow imply that you must have been gifted with special insight to have bought a Sony product.

Sony then invite some of them to join special future thinking forums (I was invited, but declined, seemed a bit pointless). *IF* sony think that most of the people who hang out on their forums are the ideal people to ask about future products, then no wonder it's going wrong for them!

Sony also have a history of dumping a product for no reason than it was only mildly successful; also, new products and tweaks are continuous. Look at the range of the PalmOs Clie's, and the sudden withdrawal from Non-Japanese markets. So, maybe the PSP isn't so unsuccessful in Sony's eyes?

So, the PSP, definitely a missed opportunity! It could have garnered a whole community of developers, hackers, media producers, interesting accessory developers, etc. Instead it's just another nice but routine product from Sony that does its job, but doesn't capture the imagination.

Love/Hate and the PSP

[jrhawk42]

First and formost I've pretty much hated every piece of sony gaming equiptment. The PS1/2/3 have all been junk in my eyes, and I was pretty skeptical about the psp at first also. Despite all my hate, the PSP has shown some potential, but first I'm going to rip on it. The game lineup is filled with wannabe console games with outdated graphics instead of pick-up/put-down, lo-fi artwork like what should be on handhelds. Also who's briliant idea was it that load times were acceptable with handhelds????? A short battery life makes it a pain taking it anywhere, and for 250 how the hell did they get by w/ not including a hard drive??? Not to mention reformatting my media collection would be a giant pain in the ass. For most accounts it fails as a media machine and fails as a handheld gaming device. On the upside it's selling pretty well (30 million worldwide), and is the only handheld to put a dent into nintendo's iron grip of the industry durring there strongest generation since tetris was released. Also I can't really blame sony for the failure of UMD's. That trainwreck is 100% hollywoods fault. They were the ones behind charging almost 2x the dvd cost while at the same time releasing movies that were completely out of the PSPs market on UMD. I'm thinking sony wanted to push digital, but at that time movie studios were parinoid of the idea. Also the psp has pretty good homebrew. I mean from what I understand you can pretty much get anything you want to run on there. I may pick one up now that the price has dropped but mostly because I want a media player that will easily play fansubbed anime on the go. I'm worried that most traditional media players are too small to read the subtitles.

PSP outsold Xbox...

[Anonymous Coward]

PSP has outsold the Xbox, Gamecube and Dreamcast. It's well ahead of the 360 and PS3, though it did launch earlier. You could look at it as a failure, but right now it's the most successful game console apart from the PS2, DS and GBA. That's not really anything to complain about.

Re: PSP didn't outsell Xbox or Gamecube... yet.

[trdrstv]

PSP has outsold the Xbox, Gamecube and Dreamcast. It's well ahead of the 360 and PS3, though it did launch earlier. You could look at it as a failure, but right now it's the most successful game console apart from the PS2, DS and GBA. That's not really anything to complain about.

Though I don't disagree with what you are saying in general, the numbers aren't there to back it up. According to The numbers posted above the PSP 21.31 million units world wide. According to Wikipedia Gamecube sold 21.59 million, and the X-box sold 24 million. I have no doubt the PSP will sell more than the above, I'm just saying it isn't there yet . Also if you are mentioning:

It's well ahead of the 360 and PS3, though it did launch earlier.

you might as well include the Wii in that statement, since it would be true as well.

So how do I FlashMe a newer PSP?

[tepples]

You *can* run homebrew on the higher firmwares, but the "official" firmwares listed can't run it. Just the custom ones. But how do I install custom firmware on a PSP that has newer firmware?

Re:They can still recover with a new tack on thing

[oldbamboo]

uh, uh, ??? wtf good is it to have open office on something with a bloody wobbly stick and no keypad, and the whole VOIP thing over wi-fi sucks ass even when it's an official feature on dedicated hardware. PSP is just crap. I see them on the tube all the time, and everyone I see with one looks like a stupid prick who should still be in short trousers with a big fucking cone stamped D on their head. Just my 2 cents.

I agree, DVD will win

[LKM]

I own an HD beamer, a PS3 and an upscaling DVD player with an HDMI output. Yes, Bluray movies look nice. You notice that during the first minute of watching a movie. Then, you forget all about it as you get into the movie.

DVDs look great on my setup, they cost half as much as Bluray movies, and I can rip them and play them on my PSP.

I own the Bluray movie I got for free with my PS3 (James Bond). I see no reason to buy another one.

PSP sucks for homebrew

[LKM]

I don't know why everyone thinks the PSP is so great for homebrew. In my opinion, it sucks. The other two consoles - both the DS and, obviously, the GP2X - are much better suited for it. The reason? You can do homebrew without having to constantly fight the maker of your console. I own all three consoles. I like my PSP, but I want to take advantage of the firmware updates Sony puts out. I want to play the latest PSP games on it (Pirates!), and I want to watch full-res movies, and I want to connect it to my PS3.

So I update the firmware. Which screws up my ability to do homebrew on it.

Contrast this to the DS, where all you need is something like the DS-X, and you can do all the normal stuff, while also doing homebrew. Or the GP2X, where homebrew is fully supported by the manufacturer.

If you are into homebrew, do yourself a favour and get the GP2X instead of getting a new PSP with a new firmware. If you want both commercial games and homebrew, get a DS.

Just one little point

[LKM]

Working with both Macs and PCs, I would tend to say that the Mac has more and better software available than Windows PCs. Maybe because Apple releases Xcode for free? Or maybe Mac users are more likely to pay for good software, making the Mac a good target for high-quality software? Either way, I never got the complaint that there was no software for Macs. Especially during the last years, I think the Mac has surpassed Windows in everything but specialized, vertical market stuff.