Apparantly the PSP2 exists.

Good if you exclude the competition's performance and the PSP's software woes.

 

I still think my PSP is the best hand held device for taking on long journeys, both as a music machine but also simply because the quality of the screen makes film viewing painless.

Plus the fact you can get a game called Throne of Agony...

I, also, still think that Chains of Olympus is the best looking hand held game I've seen.

 

Isn't the PSP Go's battery life worse than the PSP-3000? A disc is not an automatic battery killer; there are plenty of other features to balance in the equation and override disc concerns. (As I recall, Sony was pretty good at managing disks in the MD era.)

Digital downloads would be much more about game control and piracy concerns. I don't see how they can possibly stop it, but to be sure they will be taking every step they possibly can to ensure this round doesn't turn out like the last one.

And to a lesser extent, digital downloads would also be about the ability to auto-update source files on PSN, add more feature-wise, and in general be more versatile than using any particular physical media, disc or cart.

 

That might mean something if they all had the same battery and capcity.

PSP first gen had a 1800mah battery . PSP 2000 had a 1200mah battery and PSP Go had a 930Mah battery.

With a portable device they can add 3G to it and have it flag home when a game is played. My Nook was $200 and came with 3g for life for free. So there isn't a reason why a psp 2 couldn't offer 3g for free for game downloads and calling home to sony. They can then offer a plan through one of the cell phone companys for online gaming

The original psp competed with new types of devices coming out at the time that did video , music and basic games. I suspect they will want to compete with tablets. Sure they wont come out with an iphone killer , but i suspect they will want to compete with the 5 inch tablets coming out. So i believe it will already have 3g support built in , mabye even 4g/lte/wimax

 

Good overall. No other non-Nintendo games consoles has even come close. If we only judge success by the current number one, that makes pretty much everyone and everything a loser!

 

People buy games regularly on Steam even though it's possible to hunt around and find sales or bargains for physical media.

Convenience can sell a lot of software. For many, not having to go to a store to purchase something they want to play can be worth 5-10 USD easily. For many it may not be worth it. But either way, that's not a particularly good argument for going DD only.

As well, going DD only will most certainly put it at a serious disadvantage currently to anything released that supports day and date (what the PSP Go screwed up on) DD along with games on physical media.

After all, if you go DD only, you've just eliminated virtually the entire country of Australia. A very significant portion of Canada, and probably a similar situation with various parts of Europe. Bandwidth caps aren't uncommon in many places in the world.

And if we're talking games that take up multiple GB's of space, that's going to run through many people's caps fairly rapidly. Especially if that bandwidth must also be shared with streaming HD video.

Myself I'd love a DD only system. Or at least one where DD releases day and date with physical media. But then again, I have broadband without a cap. Not something I can claim for everybody I know that plays games.

Regards,
SB

 

The 3G fair usage limits are simply too low to make it viable. I pay £50 a month for my phone contract with "unlimeted" Data package, but the fair usage cap is around 1GB per month. Even on iphone 3G downloads are capped at 20Mb, anything above requires wifi, because they know huge 400Mb downloads are not viable over 3G. Not to mention the 3G coverage is not good enough, here in uk i regularly run into problems even in built up areas, id imagine it is far worse in other parts of the world sony wish to sell to. Again, having 3G built in would be great for those that can use it but in no way should they be thinking of removing physical media because of it, there is absolutely no benifit for doing so. Power usage and form factor are the only concerns but they depend on the type of physical media used, there is a case for sony to move away from UMDs i guess, but not to do away with physical media altogether (at the moment atleast).

 

DD only distribution is many years away so it doesn't make much sense to go DD only at this point in time. I would say PSP3 would be the best time to start the transition and would probably show a 75/25 split on DD/Physical and PSP4 would be the first and best time for DD only distribution.

Current DD still limits where the purchaser can "download" the media, much like brick and mortar stores you can only get the content within certain areas.

DD: Your home, Wifi hotspots, possible 3G coverage areas.
Brick and Mortar: Walmarts, Bestbuys, Gamestops, Ebay etc etc.

With the popularity of Video Streaming (Netflix, Hulu, etc) already putting a strain on many peoples current download caps, speeds and accessibility I don't see this next generation being a good time for DD only.

Why so many people want to push for DD only right now I don't know; I have a pretty decent connection and it took me longer to download Socom and the Cold Front expansion back (total around 3GB) then it would have taken me to jump in my car and drive 2 miles to my local Walmart or used video game store and bought the physical copies (would have been cheaper too!!)

DD for movies works great because you can stream your movies, the initial buffer time is so short and the movie continues to download while you watch it that our current infrastructure works great for it...DD games will not for quite a while.

 

Is it a success or has sony used other area's of its busniess to keep the product afloat for all tehse years.

The pc market doesn't have a used game market. Also steam regularly has sales. In fact its easier to find something on sale with steam than at retail.

Its why I mentioned 3g bundling. I'm not of the asumption that psp2 games will increase as greatly as you guys must feel.

 

It's sold, what...60 million? Most of that profitable hardware. How can it not be considered a success on its own merits? How many other platforms, handheld or home-based, have sold 60 million units?

 

I would tell you to look at software sales. Many people will buy an easily hacked system that not only allows you to pirate its software but also run roms of past systems

 

Firstly, PSP titles still manage to top the Japanese charts. Secondly, the original point was:

There's zero reference to software sales. and unless you have some reliable evidence that tens of millions of PSP owners are running custom firmware, your point that PSP only sells to pirates and isn't a valid platform is unsubstantiated.

 

Well the hardware might be profitable, but is it profitable enough to sustain a dedicated handheld division, including the initial costs to get the division running in the first place.

It also steals resources from the stationary console division, which is no doubt top priority within Sony now. With every PS3 sold Sony can potentially sell additional (profitable) Sony products. While every PSP sold might have the opposite effect.

 

Huh? The PSP is 7 yrs old, what part of sustained doesn't that cover?

As to the rest, you're probably right since, as you know, the DS has decimated Nintendo's stationary console.

 

Doesn't that actually highlight the UMD not really mattering? Between the 1000 and 2000 they got the same battery life while reducing the capacity by 1/3rd. It's not like anything about the UMD changed. And the ~22% drop between 1200 and 930 reflects pretty directly to the drop of 4 hours to 3 hours on the low-end of the game-playing capacity, going by figures people have been laying out for the PSP-3000 vs Go.

It appears to be largely chip and screen concerns, and other internal power management--all fitting into their form-factor/cost/capacity desires. And offhand, it doesn't seem they're at all concerned with battery life needing to be any higher than it already is. The Go certainly could have been, and was not. And the public largely doesn't seem to care; whereas the handheld junkies played up battery life to high heaven at the DS/PSP launch, I don't think anyone really cares compared to every other system trait first.

I assume that's probably a mixture of people realizing where the "good enough" level is, as well as getting used to similar expectations from smartphones and other such portable platforms at full tilt.

Regardless, battery concerns really wouldn't be in play for the disc/no-disc decision.

That would certainly be beneficial and would be a great boon for a system, but I can't see any carrier willing to adopt such a model for full game (or streaming game) downloads. For most people, a lifetime of book downloads would not amount to a single serious game download. Notice the Kindle has tight bandwidth restrictions on any other usage.

So I don't see that being a factor in any disc/no-disc decision; no carrier is going to agree to a package like that for game distribution. Online play, maybe... A subscription option would change things, but I think that would severely hamper interest if that was the option, so... that won't be leaned on as the primary/necessary distribution method. No to mention that would just be an extension of what you can already do with the PSP-3000's physical/digital mix.

Would be a nice add-on, but Sony's been notoriously bad about software/media development on their platforms that in any way captures public interest. And, again, these pursuits would in no way be interfered with even if discs/carts remained a primary game distribution method.

They'll certainly WANT to compete with iPods Touch and Tablets Lite, though they already dropped the ball writ large with the PSP Go. And physical vs. digital-only game media won't change that aspect.


It's pretty much all going to be about game and distribution platform control. There are other advantages that come along for the ride, but that will be the driving force for an all-digital push.

I don't actually see the retail chains being an issue here; they can always distribute codes in plastic cases. The primary counter-points to abandoning physical altogether are likely to be "can our network handle it" and "will the public get riled up at losing instant-gratification." The latter can be mitigated somewhat by offering pre-release demos/downloads, but that puts even more stress on the former. (Maybe each PSP2 will come with a built-in BitTorrent client. )

 

They did add 64 megs of RAM for UMD data caching in the later models, I believe.

 

I think it'll be interesting to see where Sony goes with the next PSP, and while some are expecting/hoping for Sony to compete with Apple's handheld devices, i think many will be surprised when Sony unviels the PSP2 as a more powerful dedicated gaming device (therefore competing directly with Nintendo once more).

I presonally don't see why Sony should concern themselves with the iDevices and various android mobile/tablets etc... as these devices invariably provide very small-scale (mostly) shallow gaming experiences. It's why many games on the app store can be free, and the majority of the software can be sold in small enough file sizes to be d/l'ed via a 3G connection on the go. PSP & the DS on the otherhand offer deeper, richer, higher priced software with files sizes weighing in at hundreds of MBs to GBs. I fail to see how a DD only PSP without physical media would be able to support d/ls of games over the 3G networks.

It's not the only reason i don't think the next PSP will be an equivalent iDevice. Another is the fact that probably one of the biggest draws for Apples devices which i think many people forget, are the oodles of non-gaming apps that the platform is able to offer. This is an area that i don't think Sony is looking to get into with PSP (i hope i'm wrong), as i believe that they want to remain principally a gaming-focussed device. Not only that i believe it would be far too hard and investment-intensive to compete with the likes of Apple with their portable iOS platform and Google's android platform, not to mention WinMo7 and the plethora of enabled phones/tablets that release with that and it's XBLive functionality. They'd be far too late to the game and would get raped badly. If they focuss on a solid portable gaming device like the 3DS and get the same 3rd parties making the same deeper and richer content, i think they can have the same if not much better success than they had with the PSP.

I think they'll put out a more powerful PSP, with autosterioscopic 3D, constantly connected 3G (for online gaming and portable MMOs) and focus primarily on competing in the dedicated portable gaming space with the PSP2 against Nintendo.

There's also nothing to stop them from developing the PSP software platform to be able to offer non-gaming apps later on down the line. That way they take less risk by doing what their known for and do best in the area they did well at the last time. They can then grow and expand the software platform and open in up to more and more devs for their own app store as they go.

That's also what i reckon Nintendo will do

 

I dunno, but since android is basically a java runtime, it should be possible to allow such apps to be run sandboxed. Sure its a far cry from native software but it should shut up alot people crying for tons of 2$ impulse-buys.
Probably wont be nice to software that expects to be run in background all the time, since starting a game should kick out everything horribly bloated from RAM (and maybe resumed later)

 

Would explain some mitigation between between the PSP-1000 and latter models, to be sure. Doesn't explain the relative parity between the PSP-3000 and Go, however. (The Go even has a smaller screen, though I don't know if it was overall less of a power draw.)

Still emphasizes that where a physical disc is concerned, it wouldn't be an overriding concern, which was my only point. If they found more of a boon going that route again, they would.

I wouldn't expect them to this time, however. It was all driven by cost/capacity concerns back in the day, and a desire to channel cheap disk manufacture into a media sub-market. Obviously that sub-market failed with UMD, and is only ramping up more and more on digital downloads and streaming, so there'd be nothing for them there. And the cost to manufacture flash memory large enough to support games of the size they want (or at least "good enough") has gotten very cheap and is only getting cheaper, so even if they want physical media there's more going for them back in the "cart department."

 

I think load times seem to be more of a reason not to go disk again instead of flash than power at this point.