Just to comment on article itself and its findings. 3.5 hours in Ridge Racer with max sound and brightness and no WiFi. Now that sounds a lot more believable then the 5 hour gameplay stories we were hearing.
Actually, it lines up pretty well with the official figures they gave, which if you recall were saying ~4 hours for graphically demanding titles, and ~6 hours for the ones less so. Darkstalkers hit 5:09 with the UMD constantly spinning, and although I don't know how much more time they would gain playing Darkstalkers under normal parameters (sans the spinning), it would certainly kick the gametime closer to six hours. Other games like their Mah-jongg and puzzle titles would almost assuredly be there. The word "gameplay" includes a broad range.
Basically, though, the "stories" tend to come from people not paying attention. Or came from sources similar to those proclaiming the device would be lucky to get 2 hours or be able to play a whole movie on the UMD. It's actually been reasonably close to their stated figures, with WiFi being one of the wild cards (that thankfully IGN's crop of tests gives more insight into. Needs more tests, though.) we've been waiting to see in action.
And considering the usual relationship of "high-performance" games to "other stuff that's made" the average game will probably be right around 5 hours.
The likes of RR and GT, though... Heh.
Still be good to see more brackets of tests like that so we can specifically evaluate other areas, though: screen brightness levels, audio between speaker and headphones and at various sound levels, MP3 playing with the screen on and off... And, of course, the ever-popular "how well does the batter retain its capacity over time" category. ^_^
There are, however, only so many hours in a day, and only so many PSP's they can use. Hehe... IGN's been pretty good with the testing so far, at least.
