Slashdot Mirror
Why the Sony PSP Had To "Go"
We recently discussed the release of the PSP Go, which drew criticism for many design choices that were of dubious value to consumers. Now, Phaethon360 sends in a story about why Sony felt the need to improve upon the old PSP. "As a format, the UMD was holding the entire platform back. Few people (if anyone) bought into the UMD movie hype Sony attempted to thrust back in 2005. Very soon after that, people realized they could rip their DVDs to a memory stick with the same quality. It's ironic how, as the price of Sony Memory Stick Pro Duo dropped and size increased, PSP UMD sales decreased along with it. It doesn't take too many Howard Stringers to figure out what the problem was." Indeed, Sony was complaining of rampant PSP piracy for quite some time. They cited "legal and technical issues" for not supporting the transfer of UMD games onto the PSP Go; undoubtedly they couldn't find a way to keep pirated games from being copied.
With hard copy disc based games you can sell them on to friends or a shop once you're done. A bit more difficult with a download - people will just want it for free and what shop will buy a memory stick off you that may or may not work and may or may not have viruses etc embedded on it?
> on a console where they are locked up tighter than a stereotypical tight-ass' asshole.
"tighter than ..."? What console's DRM hasn't been broken, except for maybe the PS3 (IBM did the security there, I think)?
Not to start this same argument all over again, but the diamond needle only rips down all those those nice soft grooves if you have a cheap turntable with a 25 gram weight on that stylus. Earlier turntables and records were even worse; the old shellack platters wore out quickly. But I have decades-old LPs you would think were virgin, played on a 1/2 gram pressure.
If the title originally came out in analog, the LP will sound better than the CD (again, given a good enough turntable. One of digital's advantages is except for speakers, more money doesn't buy better sound). If it was originally mastered digitally, the CD will sound better than the LP.
Any time you mix analog with digital you get the worst of both worlds, with the advantages of neither. Many titles that originally were LP will have the CD sound better than the LP, because the LP was digitally mastered. Don't bother buying the LP version of any new music, because the new music will have been mastered digitally.
Free Martian Whores!
South Park is computer generated. Some of the shorts they made (and maybe the pilot episode?) were done on construction paper but every episode since has been generated on computers.
And yeah, South Park rocks. I love when they do political commentary. They even spawned a movement of sorts. To quote Stone, "I hate conservatives, but I really fucking hate liberals."
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Nintendo said, repeatably, the DS was not a replacement for the GBA, they will exist concurrently and continue to have game developed on them. One year later, the GBA was dead. I can see Sony completely killing the "old" PSP model in favor of the 100% Sony controlled PSP Go, even if it is an utter failure. They will take my PSP-2001 from my old dead hands.
You are supposed to read into it. The intention was to point out that Sony's attempt to increase sales by reducing the price of 1 item, correlated with reduced sales of another item. By referring to it as irony, there is an implied causation as well as correlation.
The irony being Sonys efforts had an opposite in meaning effect for them.
That holds up with your definition as well - just have to read backwards from the irony, rather than imply a mistake was made when it isn't spelled out for you.