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Why the Sony PSP Had To "Go"

Posted by Soulskill on from the it-was-getting-late-and-the-dog-had-been-inside-all-day dept.

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.

5 of 261 comments (clear)

  1. Movie failure. by Hozza · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Sony can only blame itself for the failure of UMD movies. When the PSP first came out I was looking forward to having portable movies, but they cost significantly more than DVD's even though they were lower quality and could only be viewed on one device (the PSP 1000 had no video out), it was no wonder they didn't sell.

    1. Re:Movie failure. by Nursie · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Yes, doomed I tell you!

      Ignore the millions of units of PSPs, PS3s, cameras, tvs and everything else, they're doomed!

      I love this site for this stuff. It's almost as if geeks believe in the legendary "informed consumer" who will act (en-masse in fact) to deny profit to companies that abuse him or her for their own ends. Unfortunately, we don't live in that world. Sony will continue to do just fine, and the people with technical/ethical problems with what they are doing will be swept under in a wave of apathy and "Oooh, shiny".

  2. Re:And because of piracy... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Personally, I think all films should be made as puppet shows but with stunning plots. People who do not like puppet shows with stunning plots are uneducated heathens.

  3. Re:And because of piracy... by Nursie · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Nonsense.

    Piracy is rampant and easy on the PSP at present, but not everyone does it.

    I use hacked firmware on my PSP, sure, because I rip my games to MemStick. I hate having to carry the UMDs around, loading times improve and the battery life is better. I also have a genesis emulator on their and some ROMS of games I used to own as a kid. That may or may not be considered piracy I guess.

    But I still pay for games and will continue to do so. I will also crack the Go if I ever get one because you can bet your ass that there won't be a mechanism to resell games you've bought, plus I would feel the moral right to transfer my current UMD based games.

  4. Re:Movies??? - pfui - GAMES by Ceiynt · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.