Sony PSP

Hold on to and and buy a next gen console..

I've never played the PSP, but that's what I would do..

 

My friend just bought one and I played it. It's cool, playing a hand-held that looks way better than Game Boy, having a DVD player, MP3 player, video player is good as well. I just don't think it is worth the money, I'dwait till the price drops or wait and get XBOX 360.

I guess you're paying for mobility because I would much rather play the games on an actual tv screen. The DVD's are special and you must buy the UMD ones of course. The standard 32 MB memory stick is good for about 3-4 MP3's before you have to reserve space for your games and a 1 GB stick will run you near $100 if not a lot more. It looks OK but not worth the money in my opinion but if you have money to blow then go ahead and blow it. You can always take it back.

I'll also go ahead and say it for DD, get Gizmondo . It does everything a PSP does plus has GPS.

 

I love x-box, but have decided to forgo the purchase, and wait for the next gen playstation based on everything that has been said over the last few weeks. I fell for the hype. I just hope the wait will be worth it.

 

With some converting, I was able to get like ~10 songs, IIRC, on the PSP, plus some game data and pics. Still would like an upgrade soon once the prices fall a little more.

I feel the PSP is worth the price, especially with all the hacks and stuff, but I'd hold off a little bit if I were you. I believe I heard something recently that they were possibly getting ready to sell just the PSP itself instead of the bundle. It has been a week or so since I read that though, and I don't remember the details, but I wouldn't doubt it. I'm not sure how soon that would be though. If you're ok paying extra for the 32 MB memory stick, the case, the earphones, etc., I guess you can get it now since it will still be around $185-$200 (guesstimating).

Personally, I love just about everything about it right now except for the fact that since launch, there hasn't been many good games to come out. I think things will start picking up soon, but if you want it just for games, you might have to stick with launch games for the time being. Should be a lot better once GTA, Burnout, FF, and so on come out though. I loved Ridge Racer and can't imagine what Burnout would be like on the PSP.

Not to mention the emulators...

 

PSP sucks monkey balls!! The batteries burn out so damn quickly when playing games or whatever.

I like the idea of movies and music in my portable and PSP does that but your better off getting a portable music player for that since the Memory Stick can only hold so much. IF you opt to buy another memory stick duo its like $40 for only 256MB and get SanDisk they are much cheaper than Sony and work just as well.

The game selection isn't that good. My brother has a Nintendo DS and I think thats much better since you can play gameboy games on that and its pretty damn fun too. (Some Wario game where you have tons and tons of mini games is addictive)

The PSP looks better than the DS though..I like the glossy finish but I find myself wiping it clean almost everytime..it looks so damn nice!

 

Like RC said, since the launch there hasn't been a lot to come out for the PSP. I still think Sony is thinking big with this thing. Developers are still trying to get a grasp of what it can do. There are limits with battery capaicty right now, and thats having an affect on the quality of games. I'm thinking you should see some really cool stuff comming out around X-mas. I'm still waiting for my backordered 1 Gig MS Duo card, and once I get that I'll be able to do a lot more with it. On the positive side...I like watching movies (the UMD movies look great), the gameplay, the potential. As for the negitives...Games look like PS1 games, expensive memory cards, not knowing what Sony has planned as future add-ons. I'd take a look at IGN or Gamespot and see what games you like and what games are comming out. I wouldn't expect the price to drop any time soon, and if you don't mind dropping another $100 bucks for a 1 gig memory card you could make this a great, must have for taking trips.

 

Really? I know that the PSP doesn't quite have the battery life of a GBA, but I've had no problems. After my longest playing sessions, I only end up around 30%-40% at worst. I will say that I tend to use the lowest light setting, but that is normally more than enough for playing games. It seems like everyone I know hasn't had problems with the battery. I guess if you like playing games 7-10 hours straight, then you might run into some problems, but I rarely play that long.

I will say, that from a gaming perspective, the DS has been a much better portable up until this point. Nintendogs seems to be doing crazy things over in Japan, and the GBA library doesn't hurt. I do think this will start to even out some once the 2nd big wave of PSP titles starts to come in. The holiday season, like wesnesked mentioned, should be pretty good for the PSP (I think GTA comes out in October).

One thing that wesnesked brought up was the UMD movies. One strange thing is that they seem to be doing pretty good, despite what everyone, including myself, thought about them prior to the PSP's release. I think two of Sony's movies (House of Flying Daggers was one, forgot the other one at the moment) sold 100K in their first months, which didn't happen for the DVD format until month 9 IIRC. A lot more movie support has been announced, such as UMD movies for South Park, Spongebob, and Chappelle's show (I can only hope these studios would consider supporting Blu-ray as easily as they did UMDs). Although the game selection has been poor, it sounds like it may have allowed for the movies to succeed.

Although I still don't care for the format for the most part until we get burners.

Is that from the Dell deal?

 

Last I read, they are loosing like 100+ dollars per system sold, so I don't know when the price will be dropping. RC Cola, can you verify that?

 

The "price cut" I was referring to seemed to be pretty much like a rumor, IIRC, and there's no timeline for when they'll start offering just the PSP itself, but considering they've been doing it all along in Japan since last December, they should be able to do it here pretty soon. Just a guess on my part though, and an optimistic one at that. After all, if the bundles still sell, why hurt themselves by offering us the stand alone pack?

As far as the $100+ per system, I have no idea what they are losing on the system right now. I wouldn't doubt that they were losing that much last December, but they may have cut that down quite a bit in those 6 months. I believe they were looking at making a profit of the PSP itself much quicker than the PS2, so they may have found ways to cut costs quicker for the handheld.

If nothing else, sales of movies and accessories (memory sticks) have done well, and game sales should pick up in a little while. That should help cushion the blow of a price cut, especially if there are $50 games that actually sell. They need to find a price that will keep costs at a minimum but also increases the sales of games. Where that price point is, I don't know.

Keep in mind that the PSP still has to launch in the UK/Europe in September. We may be complaining, but it will cost them ~$326 for the PSP. So I guess we'll be lucky if we can get a PSP at a ~$199 or lower price before then.

 

it's more like 3-4 hours from my estimates

and when your on road trips or a plane you don't get to recharge it for awhile and then you get bored

 

Wow. How do you play your games? (brightness, volume, wifi, type of game, etc.) That's got to be the lowest battery estimates I've seen for the PSP. Ironically, I was just listening to the podcasts from the TSS people (Leo, Patrick, Yoshi, Robert, Kevin, etc.), and they were commenting on how great the PSP was, and how it lasted long enough for any long flights. IIRC, Yoshi had been taking some long 4-5 hour flights and loved the PSP for situations like those. You can't recharge on a plane, or other place, but with careful usage, you shouldn't really have to. It should last long enough to allow you enough time to play some games, watch some movies, listen to some music, etc., and allow you to charge it later.

 

you think mines a lemon? I usually don't play continuously for 3-4 hours its usually in intervals throughout the day

 

Get the car charger.

And take a trip to the lavatories on the planes and sit there for a while, and plug it into the outlet and charge 'er up.

 

I bought my son one on his last day of school.........he said 'Thanks Dad" and hasnt said a word to me since. He loves that thing. Bought it at Costco for $310. It came with two games.

 

I don't know what it is, but you should be able to get more than 3-4 hours of battery life from it. I guess you could be draining the battery pretty quickly if you were playing Twisted Metal on the highest brightness, with sound maxed out, and with the wi-fi switched on, but that would probably be the biggest drain possible on the battery. If you were playing Lumines on low or medium brightness and sound, then I don't see why you couldn't get 6+ hours out of it (pretty conservative number I think).

I play pretty much like you said. I'd probably play some Ridge Racer, follow that up with some music, stick it on standby/sleep, then come back later and play some MGA/Untold Legends, and then maybe finish up the day with some more Ridge Racer. I imagine that in all, that would be more than 3-4 hours, and I normally have plenty of battery left. If it wasn't for the fact that I normally recharge it any time it gets lower than ~60%, I could probably last a weekend without recharging it.

Keep in mind that I don't use wifi, and I normally keep the brightness low. And now that I think about it, I *think* that songs in the ATRAC format drain the battery less than MP3, so that may help my battery times a little bit, although I don't think the audio playing aspect of the PSP is that much of a drain in the 1st place.

And what Uprising said sounds good. Can't believe I didn't think about that stuff.

Sounds like me the day I got my PSP. I said thanks and was never seen again for that entire weekend.

 

I like mine a lot, but I play more PC and Console games by far....

I will refrain from pimping my ride here.

DD

 

my girlfriend bought me one for my birthday a couple days ago and it's freaking awesome. the screen is fantastic. i had never seen one up close before and i was blown away at how sharp it is.

right now the only game i have is twisted metal. graphic-wise it looks even better than any of the twisted metals on ps1. whether it's meant to be more powerful, i have no idea, but comparing the paris level on twisted metal 2 vs the similar design on head- on, the psp seems to win hands down. maybe it's the screen.

best feature so far with the lack of any huge release in new games, is that you can do so much **** with this thing. i only have the 32 meg card now which is basically 25 minutes of average quality video but with a decent size card you could fit a number of tv shows or a full dvd on there. same goes with mp3's.

the most negative thing i can think of is that in order for you to enjoy this thing to the fullest you're gonna have to spend some money. i wouldn't buy it over a next-gen console but if you have the use for a wide range of portable entertainment and can afford it, you'll love it.

 

The PSP is way more powerful than the PS1; in fact, it has some advantages over the PS2 in some regards when it comes to graphics. That said, the PS2 does have a lot more raw power than the PSP; however, given the screen size and ease of development, I could see some games on the PSP later on that look on par with the PS2 stuff, maybe even close to the great PS2 stuff. For those that don't know, AFAIK, every game for the PSP thus far is not using the full power of the PSP (wesnesked alluded to this earlier). Basically, the CPU is being locked at 222 MHz (out of 333 MHz), and the GPU is locked too (I think ~116MHz out of ~160MHz, or something like that; this one is harder to remember). This was done to keep acceptable battery life. Sony and others should come out with some new batteries soon, and they may even reduce the power drains of new PSP's, so that shouldn't last too long. Plus, developers will have had a nice amount of time to figure out the best way to combine great graphics with great battery life. I would guess all those big games slated for the Fall will not be locked.

This was mentioned earlier, but it is a good idea to check out what is slated to come out for the PSP, for curiousity if nothing else. I hadn't checked one out in a while and decided to check the release dates from IGN:
http://psp.ign.com/release/

As for as games goes, it is still pretty depressing, unless some of those TBA 2005 games turn out to be summer games. But I'm again surprised by the movie support. It looks like the PSP will be getting some good movie support this summer starting tomorrow. I wasn't planning on getting one anytime soon, but something about a Napoleon Dynamite UMD seems to call out towards me.

One thing that this IGN page doesn't show is the *other* kind of movie support, if you know what I mean. GS has an article about this, although it appears to be Japan-only at the moment:
http://www.gamespot.com/news/2005/06/02/news_6126863.html

I believe Playboy already had some deal done with the PSP. So I guess the p*rn aspect of the PSP is another plus, although I don't think Sony will be hyping this aspect of the PSP that much. I guess this is a place where the beautiful screen shines best though.

Anyways, back to something a little less awkward, for those getting a Xbox 360/PS3, keep in mind that the PSP will have some sort of functionality with those devices (more so the PS3, obviously). With the tech in the PSP, the PS3, and today�s PCs, Sony can do some cool things to anyone who has those devices. It is mostly up to them to come up with the ideas, but this could be another thing that the PSP can used for. Hopefully, they have more than just a PSP controller planned, although I guess that could be cool in some ways.

Something tells me that 4-5 years down the road, you may be able to do some amazing things with the PSP, be it because of Sony, 3rd parties, or crazy "1337" hackers. You may think it does a lot now, just think about what it could do.

*remembers the thread about the GBA playing videos, music, etc., at a decent price and quality.*

On a gaming-related note, the Xbox 360 seems to be getting ready for launch. Beta kits (basically the final hardware, except for maybe a clockspeed tweak or something small like that) are going out to developers right now, and MS is starting to produce the CPU and GPU. I read that they should start mass-producing the 1st retail systems near the end of July. That should give you guys some sort of idea about when the console will come out, and maybe how many will be available.