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Sony Opens PSP Store on the PC
GamesIndustry.biz is reporting that Sony has opened up a new downloads store for the PlayStation Portable. Store.playstation.com interfaces with your existing PSN network id, and will allow purchase and download of games, trailers, and demos to your Sony handheld. The company is already clarifying that this 'won't kill the UMD format', and that this is just an alternative method to obtain content. Darren Carins, head of online marketing for SCEE, was quoted as saying "The UMD business is still good for us and our publishers. It's still a burgeoning market, and we're still selling a large number of PSPs on a weekly basis, so there are a large number of new people coming into the market. I don't think that this would give us any cause for concern over UMD, I think they sit very well together. When you talk about the more casual games, pick-up-and-play games, you would definitely want to put them through the Store rather than have disc production, in to retail, and so on."
signals to me that the format is in deep trouble. If they didn't feel this move could be interpreted as being a negative for UMD, they wouldn't have defended it.
Part of the hardcore faithful who believed in Apple long before it was cool again to do so
What t hey're doing is not a kill to UMD. It's to allow people to purchase, d/l and store PSP content on the PC instead of forcing consumers to invest in a PS3.
In all it is a good marketing move to foster more consumer trust and allow some consumer choice.
In the future more PSOne games will be available for the PSP download service. Some are very large (FF7-9) and would require considerable space for permanant storage.
UMD disks hold 1.8 gigs of data. The MEmory Stick the PSP uses holds 4 gigs max at $50-80 per card. It's simply not cost effective to replace UMD with these "yet". It you could d/l PSP games directly to the memory stick you could fit 2-3 games. Even at a discounted price, we're breaking even, or exceeding cost of the UMD.
THe benefit though, is you have fast game read times, fast write, and a smaller footprint than the UMD disks. A basic cary case could now hold 10-20 memory sticks each holding roughly 2 games giving you the capacity to store roughly 40 games in a small cary case, versus the 4 UMD disks current travel cases can carry. Added benefit is your save games can be stored directly on the memory stick with the game.
Ok after some thought, eliminating UMD altogether is a good idea "if" they lower memory stick prices considerably.
Faster load times, bigger storage capacity (4 gigs vs UMD 1.8) directly writable, not affected by scratches, smaller... it's just all good.
Either way you read it, demise of UMD, boost to memory stick, elimination for the need of a PS3... It's a good move on Sony's part. Pipe dream, but maybe they're becoming more consumer friendly.
Well, it took them long enough to make the store available to people without a PS3, but I'm glad they're finally offering this content without the $400-600 access point. I was very, very excited when I heard about being able to play PS1 games on the PSP around a year ago, less excited when I found out you needed a PS3, and completely disappointed when I saw the title selection.
I would be thrilled if they would put a reasonably complete selection of old PS1 titles up on this store. I doubt it will ever happen, but I would gladly spend $5 to download an old PS1 game I enjoyed rather than have to balance my ability to play old games on my PSP without (any new) risk with the ability to play the new games and once again risking a a brick. A boy can dream, right?
OTOH I never bought any movie twice, and I tended to buy trashy UMD movies second hand anyway.
So your problem is the logo screens that have been around since the SNES/Genesis? Man you've missed out on some good gaming :(
Oh, I don't mind a logo screen that takes a few seconds, especially if I can press a button to skip it or if it's there while something else is loading, but waiting for a publisher's logo to load just so I can be advertised to isn't what I want.
This is good news for the PSP homebrew scene, just edit the binaries of the games to create your own, and it should work fine on almost any firmware.
There is no "disagree" moderation, and troll, flamebait and overrated are not valid substitutes
So, since you don't have to pay for packaging, a physical disc, or any manuals, inserts, or other crap, or any of the other stuff that goes with it (like royalties for artists, production costs for any of the above, silk printing), the games bought online are going to be a whole bunch cheaper, right? ...Right?
Moreover, having to hit Start several times (EA logo, game logo, NFS:Underground "safety" video, title sequence ...) before I get to the menu of the game I'm already annoyed to be playing gets old VERY fast. (Please, no cracks about NFS:Underground;)) This same thing happens on PC and console games.
/rant off. Sorry guys. (-: Anywho, things like this are why I enjoy older games, or games from publishers like Introversion, Blizzard, and Valve.
I rather like it on PC games when I can skip the title sequence and just get to a menu. Blizzard does this right. Once I've seen the Starcraft cinematic, never again (unless I want to). (Valve seems to do it right too, at least with the older versions of CS and HL I have.) In contrast, starting up SFC3 involves skipping a couple things. Anything from Ubisoft, or EA, or sponsored by NVidia (or ATI, I presume), is going to have another 3 seconds of unskippable crap.
Never mind that some only skip if you press Escape, yet exit the game if you hit Escape at the menu. It's not aggravating to have to restart the game a SECOND time because I hit it 5x insteadof 4... (Fallout2...).
I sound bitter. Sorry. This is something that's annoyed me for some time. I really don't care who the publisher is (I can see it on the box), and if anything this behavior sours my opinion of the publisher -- because they have explicitly marred my gaming experience every time I've loaded their games. I don't mind seeing all that crap the first time, but for goodness sake let me have an option to turn the crap off.