large sized http://www.scei.co.jp/corporate/release/041027a.html WOO! For more info + japanese press release + translations http://ga-forum.com/showthread.php?t=20774&page=1&pp=50
That's just crazy nice....i don't do enough gaming to be getting a portable one but it stil nice technology wise.
WOW, i mean wow. This will force several things to happen. IPOD is gonna go down faaaast (UMD can carry up to 1.8 GB of data including music, and it's switchable). All the lower end MP3 player companies can just kiss that market good bye. Portable DVD players will now look like a ripoff (150 bux and can't play games, not to mention the huge disks, wtf?). This is huge. Instead of making a good next gen system or atleast work it so that GC can have a big market, Nintendo put all it's egg in the handheld basket and it just got pwned the F*ck out. I can't freaking believe this, I would say unless they come out with something revolutionary, Nintendo is done. Sony and XBox, will usher a new era of video game companies being just a subdivision of a bigger company (not that it's bad as long as there is price wars and forcing the evelope). I've always being a huge Nintendo fanboy, just bought a classically trained shirt with a Nintendo logo. I also own a GC as my only console system. But I would just like to say, that company is done.
Here is a link to some more great pictures and stuff about it and it actuall working with screen shots...the thing looks amazing to be honest. The picture links are on the left side. http://www.digitalbackspin.com/psp-main.asp
Darn it Sony. You just had to make the biggest announcements on the PSP while I was asleep. Oh well, at least the announcements kicked butt. IMO, great move on the price. I thought they could possible release at around $250-275, but when the DS came out at $150, I didn't think that would work. At $185, that would be a great price compared to the DS. The battery life also looks nice, with 4-6 hours of gameplay and 4-5 hours for movies. The gameplay was at about what I expected but the movie playing looks a bit better. I think a battery costs liks $45, so it wouldn't be too bad of an idea to get one. The things that sort of surprised me was how many titles they'll have by the end of the year. I mean, it will come out on the December 12th and then have 21 titles by the end of the month. "Analysts" were worried about it only have a few games, being crazily expensive, and only having 2 hrs of battery life, but I guess they were wrong. I also wonder if there will be a slight price drop when it hits America in March (I'm assuming that is still the approximate release date). Things tend to be a little more expensive in Japan, so we could possibly expect it to cost even less. I guess the only other price that I'm wondering about is the games. I just woke up and have tried to comprehend all this, but I don't believe I saw a price for games. If Sony does want to make a profit off of this, they may have to sell games a little high to deal with the cost to sell it at $185, although I guess the games could still be comparable to regular game prices ($50). I don't know about all that. I guess it could affect it somewhat, but since the UMD can only be done by Sony and not us, we'd be stuck with what they sell. With no hard drive on the PSP, we'd have to basically stick to any songs on the UMD or on a memory stick. And for DVD players, people with 100's of DVD's may not want to re-buy them all in UMD format, if they even offer them. I like the options, but I think the original players in this field due have an advantage in their field of work...of course, they can't play any games on ~PS2 quality. I don't know about that either. I agree that Nintendo does have some work to do, especially if they want to regain the #1 spot from Sony, but they're not doing too bad. If losing $2-$4 billion dollars and being 3rd in the world in total console sales is good (I'm looking at you Microsoft), then I guess Nintendo is doing quite well, especially since they made a little money this gen with the GC and great 1st-party games. I also believe that they have the GBA 2 that should come out not that long after the DS, so the PSP will have to fend of both. I also don't think all 50 million GBA users will flock to the PSP. With the price, I could see the PSP selling a little better than I thought it would, but I'm sure a lot of people will still get the DS. The Revolution is still quite a mystery mark as well. I know they got ATI working on their GPU and they want a "Revolution." Of course, if the idea sucks and the games don't look that good, this could hurt Nintendo, although I'm guessing their software will help. All in all, I'm somewhat worried about them, but not as worried as I would be if I was in Microsoft's seat. Man, Sony sure is trying to dominate the video game world...
Damn, at that starting price, I may have to pick one up at some point. Launch list of games: Tiger Woods PGA Tour Need for Speed Underground Rivals Vampire Chronicle: The Chaos Tower Shin Sangoku Musou Mahjong Taikai Mahjong Kakutou Club Metal Gear Acid Kollon Puyo Puyo Fever Doko demo issho Minna no Golf Portable Puzzle Bobble Pocket Kotoba no puzzle mojipittan daijiten Ridge Racers Rengoku The Tower of Purgatory Eiyu Densetsu Gagharv Trilogy Lumines Armored Core: Formula Front AI Igo AI Shogi AI Mahjong I need at least one of the mahjong games (btw, these aren't the tile matching version, they are probably the card game). Then a Tetris game to sell my wife on it =). So am I wrong in believing that you could burn either your DVDs to the mini-dvds or burn an mp3 dvd and play that? If so, it would be a really cool multi-fx machine. What would be even cooler would be if it can take the sony pro duo memory sticks as well, and let me look at my pictures from my sony camera. Maybe I'm just dreaming....?
At least for a while, only Sony will be able to burn games, music and movies on to the UMDs. IIRC, even the companies making the games have to send them in to Sony to produce. This is a bit of a downer since it the device could really take off if we could just burn movies, music, etc., all onto the discs. We could possibly even find a way to run some games off of it as well. Of course, Sony did this to prevent piracy and illegal downloads. I believe that they're leaving the option open to later release a UMD burner if the format does well. So basically by 20 games, 32 music UMDs, and 15 movies and one day, you may have a UMD burner. I believe you can do the picture thing though, although I'm not for sure.
Sweet. If this holds true, that's awesome. I believe there are going to be several packages available - at least that was the rumor at one time - and if still true, this would be the cheapest of the three, I'd imagine.
tha price is just right man i thought these thigns was gonna cost like 300 hundred sumthin im fo sho gettin me one
wow that thing looks pretty sweet, also kinda big but at that price i might get one, though i don't play portables at all really. wizkid83 you are WAY WAY WAY off. it looks damn cool for sure but as for ipod it could give a crap about the psp. a person looking for a portable mp3 jukebox is not gonna buy a psp. period. same thing for portable dvd players. it doesn't even play dvds. nintendo is the only company that might be worried but they've completely owned the handheld market forever and the gameboy classic back in the day survived tons of color screens, fancy games, etc. from other companys. personally i'd buy a psp over a ds but nintendo has enough exclusive games that peope will stick with it. they're far from dead.
IGN's got some pretty good info on the PSP right now. For anyone who wants one, it may not be a bad idea to check it out. Here are some of the things that stood out: - Finally got news of the Square-Enix game being developed for the PSP. Turns out it is a Final Fantasy game. It is called Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII, so it is another game in the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII. It is listed as an Action-RPG. The bad news is that the expected release date is 2006, and that is in Japan. No telling when it will come out in the US. By then, I'd be playing my PS3 on Blu-ray discs and checking out other Cell products. - The people making GT4: Mobile seem to want to make wireless multiplayer play a big part of the game, something GT4 fans may miss with the announcement of no immediate online play for the PS2 GT4. I'm not sure if they'll do this or how hard it will be, but if they both launch around the same time, you could play the PS2 version and then possibly import the data to your PSP and then play people that way until they release an online mode for the game. (or I should say if, but I think it sounded like they were still planning it. Plus, that means more $$$) - Level 5 (Dark Cloud and Dragon Quest VIII) is making a RPG for the PSP. All I know is that the RPG lineup for the PSP is sounding pretty awesome, although I'm not sure how many of them will be available at near launch. - IGN said something about the possibility of having game content, music content and movie content all on one UMD. I almost didn't read that right and thought nothing of it, but it sounds kind of cool. Like IGN said, a good example of this type of usage would probably end up being FF7: Advent Children. It would be sweet if they had some type of game(s) based on the movie. I guess this would be pretty good incentive for consumers to buy UMD's for other forms of media instead of just games. I know I wouldn't bother buying some of my movies over again just to watch it on on the road, but if I could watch Spider-Man 2, play a few games based on the movie, and then listen to the soundtrack, I'd definitly consider buying it in the UMD format. Remember people, the more you buy, the better chance we get of getting a burner...or maybe Sony's just screwing with us in order to get more sales. I can't remember if IGN has a story on this or not, but there will also be a Batman game for the PSP based on the upcoming movie and it will be made by EA. The game will also be available for the PS2, Xbox, GC, and GBA, IIRC. Check out a pic (sweet, image posting abilities): I didn't see this at IGN, but I read somewhere that Sony planned on not making a profit off the PSP until the next fiscal year starts in April, IIRC. I'm not sure if they meant from the PSP and PSP-related sales (games, accessories, etc), or if they actually meant that they could start selling the PSP's at $185 and make money off of that. I'd think the 1st one is most likely true, but since Sony does make their own hardware, perhaps they could find ways to cut back on production costs. If they could get a profit by selling a device like this for that price, good for them. Another thing I heard about was how it may be possible that the battery life could be extended, in a ways. Unlike the DS and other cartridge-based handhelds, developers have a lot of control on how much battery a game will drain. It may be possible that as more time is spent on developing games, better battery life may be possible. As of now, the average may be 4-6 hours, but it may be possible that a development team learns how to add another hour while keeping roughly the same content. So maybe games on the PSP in a year or so will not only look better, but they battery life could be better. This is more of an idea than it is a fact, but it seems like it could happen. I'm still pretty stoked about this news. I wasn't sure if I'd get one based on the rumored prices, but at that price, I think I could probably get one. I may even go with the package since it seems like a good price too.
In Japan, it will be out December 12th. For America, I don't think a true date has been mentioned. IIRC, they set March or spring as a target date and haven't really moved it back AFAIK, so I'd guess that around March would be the time the PSP would come to America. IIRC, some of the EA PSP games have March release dates.
There's a good chance there will be third party companies that make writeable UMDs. If PSP sell it enough (and it will), then it will happen. Not to mention sony wants make it the next gen all in one handheld and they have the Sony Music division, so it's perfectly possible for them to push and cross boundary product.
Actually, there isn't really any chance of a 3rd party company doing it if I understand things correctly. Like I said, only Sony can make them. And last I heard, they only plan on putting out read-only UMD's. Right now, it seems they're worried about piracy and making sure people buy UMD's, so they want to take a certain approach with it. But like I said, they are open to eventually letting others, including us, burn our own stuff.
wow it looks nice. I like the price too. I am probably going to get one of these when it comes out. Long airplane flights suck....this would help, although I would have to sneak into the bathroom to recharge the battery every couple of hours.
