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PSP Go With 16GB Memory and Bluetooth Leaked

Lyonhrt writes "Engadget and Gizmodo have spilled the beans on the news of the new UMD-less PSP Go that comes with 16GB of memory and a slide screen; also among the features will be built-in Bluetooth and an undisclosed memory slot. The console will be sold alongside the PSP-3000, but there are no details on price at this time. This is obviously Sony's answer to the lost battle with the PSP Homebrew and Hacking Communities, which have cost many thousands of lost sales with custom firmwares."

19 of 190 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Who cares? by Dwedit · · Score: 5, Informative

    The directional controls on mobile phones are crap compared to a Gameboy. Only touchscreen-based or simple puzzle games work well on a phone.

  2. How does custom firmware "lose sales" by SuperKendall · · Score: 4, Insightful

    To run custom PSP firmware, you would in fact need a PSP to run it.... custom firmware only increases sales through increased usability and features.

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    1. Re:How does custom firmware "lose sales" by TheKidWho · · Score: 4, Informative

      Because almost everyone who runs with customfirmware just downloads the game files via torrent?

      Most consoles are sold at a loss and makeup this loss through licensing fees for games.

    2. Re:How does custom firmware "lose sales" by MoFoQ · · Score: 5, Interesting

      true but one of the many things custom firmware can do is bypass regional lock outs and allows people to buy imported games.

    3. Re:How does custom firmware "lose sales" by Darkness404 · · Score: 4, Informative

      It loses sales because the majority of people running custom firmware do so to play pirated games. Same goes for the R4 device on the DS.

      [Citation Needed]

      Sure, custom firmware can be used to play pirated PSP games much as how a candle can be used to burn down a house, yet that isn't necessarily mean thats the reason for having a candle burning in a house. There are many applications such as Nintendo emulators, etc. that will never be released on the PSP with an official release yet you can get them via custom firmware.

      Same thing with the DS, as someone who owns a flash cart (purchased oddly enough at Wal-Mart) there are many, many, many quality applications that are DS homebrew. Some things such as emulators will never be released for it legitimately and there are also many homebrew games that will never be officially released for it.

      In most homebrew circles piracy is frowned heavily upon.

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    4. Re:How does custom firmware "lose sales" by V50 · · Score: 5, Informative

      Because despite the people who get up in arms over how Sony is attempting to crush the poor, innocent "homebrew" community, every single person I know IRL who has run custom firmware has used it to pirate games, and maybe an emulator.

      And these are very much lost sales, I've seen people go from regularly buying PSP/DS games to not buying any at all once they discovered they could pirate them. :-/

    5. Re:How does custom firmware "lose sales" by DrXym · · Score: 5, Insightful
      There is no way of quantifying how many people using custom firmware do it for piracy and how many for homebrew. But common sense dictates that the vast majority use it for piracy.

      If genuine homebrewers are shocked by this accusation, there is a simple solution. Disable iso record / playback functionality in custom firmware. Let people build homebrew apps but prevent people from playing warez. Let's see how popular custom firmware is then.

    6. Re:How does custom firmware "lose sales" by kjart · · Score: 4, Interesting
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD_region_code#Purpose

      That's not entirely true. While I agree that it's kind of stupid, they do this so they can sell things at a higher price in more wealthy areas of the world. Nobody making $20/month or whatever in a poorer country is going to pay $20+ for a DVD (or Bluray) - this is intended to stop you from buying thing from countries where things are priced cheaper.

    7. Re:How does custom firmware "lose sales" by V50 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      In most homebrew circles piracy is frowned heavily upon.

      Honestly, in my experience with people IRL, every single one of them running custom firmware on their DS or PSP uses it to pirate games. Heck, I'd gotten to the point of where I was almost translating "homebrew" into pirated games.

      While there might be a small number of people who actually do run custom firmware and don't pirate games, for the vast majority of the public custom firmware = free gamez. Same as modchips.

    8. Re:How does custom firmware "lose sales" by Your.Master · · Score: 3, Informative

      No.

      There's economics of scale in here. Selling it in all territories for the price they do in poor territories is not profitable. However, selling it in poor territories for the price they sell it in rich territories is pointless because they will make 0 sales.

      They can sell these things for barely above the DVD pressing and distribution costs, but they also need to recover the upfront costs of making the movie.

    9. Re:How does custom firmware "lose sales" by Spatial · · Score: 3, Informative

      But the PSP doesn't have regional lockout. You can already play imported games on any PSP. I think there was maybe a few exceptions to that, but on the whole, nope.

      Granted there are plenty of other reasons to want homebrew. I wouldn't have bought a PSP if it couldn't do it.

  3. I dispute the "Lost Sales" part. by pecosdave · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I'm sure they've lost a few, but most pirates are cheap assholes who wouldn't have bought the games had they not been able to pirate them instead. I've been around quite a few pirates, most pirates are cheap bums who don't like they fact they have to buy the player/console and get upset over having to buy the "expensive" blank media needed to pirate. Movies and would prefer to use some other persons bandwidth to do downloading if possible.

    On the other hand, the "backup" crowd, such as I'm actually a part of, probably spend more on their devices than the normal kid who has his mommy buy him a few games.

    I've got around 15 PSP games, I've got about 5 genuine Magic Gate compliant memory cards ranging from 256 MB to 16GB, I bought my PSP 2000 new off the shelf, and I actually have about 1/2 dozen UMD movies along with some various other accessories. Every PSP game on my memory cards were legally purchased, only one used, the rest were out of the shrink wrap.

    Considering the tons of music CD's I have all ripped and on my Iriver and iPhone, I would say there's a lot of hot air where the average consumer was concerned. If Sony wants to go after real pirates they need to focus on Flea Markets and the gas stations/etc.... that sell burned CD's with Xeroxed pictures in the cases, not people who don't want to carry a ton of UMD's. Of course I'll admit 16GB on board with digital distribution is a step in the right direction.

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  4. Irrelevant by neokushan · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This is obviously Sony's answer to the lost battle with the PSP Homebrew and Hacking Communities which have cost many thousands of lost sales with custom firmwares.

    How on earth does this have anything to do with the PSP hacking? How does this affect that at all, aside from being yet another revision to hack?
    The lack of UMD drive is completely irrelevant, bluetooth is irrelevant and having 16GB of onboard flash memory is only going to benefit the hackers if and when they figure out a way to install custom firmware on this.

    However, the PSP-3000, right this second CANNOT be hacked or flashed with custom firmware. It's close, recent developments have allowed all PSP-2000s to be temporarily flashed, but as I said this is recent (maybe a couple of weeks? Although the exploit is still only about 3 months old). Sony didn't have to come up with an "answer", they already had one and it took until recently for them to hack it. This summary is useless.

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  5. Re:D.O.A by EpsCylonB · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I think they are betting that the distribution model will completely change over the next 5 years or so. Your old psp and the umd's don't automatically stop working just because they released a new piece of hardware. I am assuming that you will be able to download new games on the older psp's as well.

    In the long term they want to compete with the iPhone, high end mp3 players and pda's. I think its a smart move, it seems to signal an impending switch to download only game sales, they might be able to come up with a way of using the model to prevent piracy which would make the platform more attractive to developers. Not removing the umd would make the product less competitive in the market in the long run.

    As a psp lite owner I think it needs a keyboard and/or touch screen to make it really useful and a threat to the likes of Apple.

  6. Re:I wonder how existing PSP owners will react by spire3661 · · Score: 3, Informative

    You buy a PSP 3000 then. It says right in the article that they will still sell PSP-3000s side by side with the PSP GO. This is a smart stop gap move by Sony. A UMD docking station is almost absolutely out of the question. Besides, IF they were to do that, they would force you to use a PS3 connected to your PSP.

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  7. Re:Who cares? by wertigon · · Score: 3, Insightful

    If the Pandora sold 1M units it'd be a runaway success. Market share isn't everything you know... :)

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  8. ergonomics? ouch! by Bobtree · · Score: 3, Insightful

    This thing looks like an ergonomic nightmare. The original PSP is already hard to hold for long periods of time, especially if you have to use the analog nub. This sliding screen setup leaves all the controls right at the bottom edge except for the L & R which are still on top. The guy in the image gallery has his thumbs bent in half! WTF Sony?

  9. Re:D.O.A by pudro · · Score: 3, Insightful

    That's a horrible idea, and you pointed out why in your own post.

    A better idea would be to team up with a store like EB/Gamestop and allow people to turn in physical copies of the game in exchange for a download voucher. They could even let you download it in the store, through a method also open for regular new purchases so that people with crappy internet connections could do the same. You could have the digital games stored locally, giving you great download speeds.

    This wouldn't be free, of course, and a small fee would be charged for these services. That way the store has some incentive to do this, and Sony still gets to double dip like you know they want to. But it is better than them asking you to pay full price a second time around.

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  10. Re:Who cares? by Trahloc · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Some of us own lots of games and feel that using an emulator to play them where we want to is a perfectly moral thing to do, whether or not "Fair Use" laws agree.

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