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Games: Sony Confirms PSPGo Gone; New Consoles Expected 2014
itwbennett writes "Sony on Wednesday confirmed rumors that it is ending production of the PSPGo, the 'slider' version of their handheld gaming system that was introduced back in 2009. Meanwhile, Kotaku posted an article saying that Microsoft and Sony probably won't be launching their next generation consoles until 2014. Whether the Kotaku prognostications are true or not, 'it's fun to think about what a console will have inside it in 3 years,' writes blogger Peter Smith. 'Will it support physical media? Probably. That seems too early for a pure digital delivery system. But I bet they'll have either terabyte hard drives or some kind of cloud storage for digital media.'"
Why does everyone assume that everywhere has real hi-speed internet? I live in not so rural PA and the only "Hi-speed" we have is cellular 3G. No cable company will come out here, no fiber, no DSL. If it doesn't use real media, it isn't going to be sold here.
Add to that the rest of the world doesn't always have unlimited bandwidth. So now you have to pay for the game and the bandwidth overages.
Think again
Why?
It's not like they want YOU doing anything with it. They buy the absolute minimum to achieve the desired result, and developers work within those bounds. I wouldn't put any effort into breaking into the locked down DRM boxes than what is necessary to play a game, especially when you can do all the same and then some on a PC.
uptime estimates accurate to within 3%, prior to termination of service.
Because you're really going to own 3+ smartphones, and have your choice of console constrained by your wireless carrier. Right.
100% uptime
I hope that was a sarcastic comment. Even as I type the PSN (Playstation Network) is down for an unspecified reason, and they think it will be down for a few days at least. 'The Cloud' is not *the* answer - it is *an* answer which should be implemented in conjunction with physical media, large hard drives, and other technology.
Douglas Whitaker
Yeah, I have been sticking with the PC for strategy, MMO, and certain FPS games. Going with the console for everything else (because I can sit on an 8' bean bag in front of a 65" television with an audio system that cost more than the last brand new car I bought a fwe years ago). However, I find myself slowly migrating back to PC for titles that I have come to feel weren't necessary to play on the PC - simply because 2011 hardware beats the shit out of low-end commodity hardware from 2005 that was being sold all together for $300 or $400 even back then.
Unfortunately, it's just not so easy, because developers focus on consoles. Even the ones who are traditionally PC developers. The PC version is usually - at best - a red headed step child. It may not be what we normally consider a "port", but it's still developed using much of the resources and limitations that result from focusing on the console. For example, with Dragon Age II, you had to register your game, login to an EA.com account, tie your game to it, enter a code, find the HD res textures bundle, download it (over 1gb), then run an installer. Just to get non-console texture resolutions in a game that was an almost PC-exclusive experience and development a year before.
So, we all suffer.
But hey, by the holiday Season of 2014, we'll finally get low-end 2010 hardware on the console side. So exciting! And by 2023, we'll finally be playing on consoles that match game experience we're getting on PCs (or could get - if developers focused on it) in 2014!
*sigh*
Because, they are selling a low end commodity product. The are selling an entire system of parts for half the price of a modern PC video card, because they perceive the consumer market as being too fucking cheap (and possibly rightfully so) to spend anything more than $300 or $400 on a gaming system that they're going to use for the next five or ten years. I enjoy gaming. I love eye-candy. I love lots of amazing stuff going on at any time time, visually and AI-wise. I love games with more people, better performance, 60fps, and all that. I am more than happy to spend $800 or $1,000 or even more on a very high end console that I'll be playing for the next decade. In the long run, it's still ten times cheaper than building a new gaming rig every 12-18 months over that same time period.
But . . . they would likely seriously suffer in sales. So it's a lowest common denominator proposition.
Apparently not dead in NA markets at this time
No sig for you!!
If you're upset about load times, complain to the developers for not streaming or caching data effectively.
Someone really needs to come up with an FPS controller that you can use in your lap while sitting on a couch or recliner. Something that gives you the full dexterity of a mouse/keyboard combo without requiring a desk.
Only when they do this will playing shooters on a console become bearable.
Here's a huge rumor-dump for the new Nintendo console which may or may not be announced at E3 (JSYK, all of this was reported before from other websites; this is just a compilation of the rumors).
To summarize for the lazy, the controller may have a touch-screen, the system is more powerful than a PS3/360, and it looks like a modern version of an SNES. This is all just rumor and speculation though, so we'll have to wait and see. If the rumors are true, then I'm really excited! I used to play those Gamecube games where you connected GBAs to the controller ports so each player had his own screen, for games like Four Swords Adventures and Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles (which are both a BLAST to play with friends, btw). It was even useful in the occasional game like Sonic Adventure 1 and 2, Mega Man X Command Mission, and Pokemon Colosseum/XD, for example. This seems just like that awesome concept, but mixed with the DS and on a much more massive scale.
If these rumors are true (or aren't as awesome as it really is), then Nintendo shows, once again, that dedicated hardware can be much, much better than a PC for gaming.
PS: I'm no Nintendo fanboy; I just like them a lot more than the competition. I have a PS2 and might get a PSP/PS3 used sometime.
"Our country is not nearly so overrun with the bigoted as it is overrun with the broadminded." -Archbishop Fulton Sheen
Tiny RAM space is one of the methods they use to slow down piracy. It's harder to hide bootloader-based copy protection cracking in resident memory if all of it needs to be used legitimately.
Are you kidding me? The PS3, Wii and 360 all have extra memory reserved for the kernel inside which piracy hacks have been placed for a while.
"Screw Sun, cross-platform will never work. Let's move on and steal the Java language." - Visual J++ Product Manager
Or rather it was expensive, and may become so again. Part of the problem is just when the consoles were designed RAM was at a premium. I remember some computers we got at work during that era that had only 256MB RAM because it was so pricey to upgrade. The other problem is RAM seems to fluctuate. It operates like a commodity market. So you can't spec a lot and count on it being cheap. Unlike most tech stuff, it can go up in price so you need to account for that.
That said, if RAM remains cheap I think you can count on the next gen consoles having a lot more, but not as much as computers.
Another issue, at least with the 360 and Wii, is that they use unified RAM. The CPU and GPU access the same memory. That means you need to use the faster sort of memory videocards use, which costs more. You'll notice that most video cards still have only 1GB of VRAM and even the really high end consumer ones only have 1.5-2GB.
Also you have to remember that pennies count in console design. They want to get a lot of hardware in the things and sell them at a low cost, that means not overdoing anything they don't need to. Past attempts have proven that consumers just won't go and buy extremely high dollar consoles, even if they come with premium hardware. That means you have to keep the cost down and that means not having too much stuff, which includes RAM.
I mean look at it this way: My computer has 16GB of RAM and for that I paid about $220. Quite cheap... However another way of putting it would be that I spent more just on system RAM than you would on an Xbox 360 S.
Would a half keyboard and a trackball work? It's too bad that Matias, which owns the patent on half keyboards, prices them squarely in the insurance-driven market for assistive devices for people with disabilities, not the consumer-driven gaming market: $595? Give me a break.
Sorry, a 7800-series GeForce is pretty low-end today.
Most modern GPUs ALONE have as much power as the entire PS3.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.