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."

Comments

Re:Who cares?

[Dwedit]

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

How does custom firmware "lose sales"

[SuperKendall]

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.

Re:How does custom firmware "lose sales"

[TheKidWho]

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.

Re:How does custom firmware "lose sales"

[MoFoQ]

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

Re:How does custom firmware "lose sales"

[Darkness404]

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.

Re:How does custom firmware "lose sales"

[V50]

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. :-/

Re:How does custom firmware "lose sales"

[DrXym]

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.

Re:How does custom firmware "lose sales"

[kjart]

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.

Re:How does custom firmware "lose sales"

[V50]

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.

I dispute the "Lost Sales" part.

[pecosdave]

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.

Irrelevant

[neokushan]

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.