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

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.

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.

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.