Was SCE mistaken in going with optical media in PSP?

one said:
PC-Engine said:
Why would you need Blu-ray or HVD for a portable with a 4.5" screen? :LOL:
It'd be interesting for you to ask yourself back in 2000 why you'd need 1.8GB disc for a portable with a 4.5" screen... :p Basically, mainstream disc media will retain the 12cm size for the next decades, so a smaller disc size has its own markets elsewhere, and one of them is gaming.

Sure, but there was room to grow from 3" screens to 4.5" screens. Do you honestly believe we'll see a portable gaming system with 10" screens in the future? :LOL:

I guess to go along with those 10" screens we'll see games with FFTSW visuals that take 2 years to develop and sell for $80. It makes perfect sense considering we'll have 20GB mini HVDs for portable gaming and all. :LOL:

On a side note, it would seriously make sense if you could pop those mini HVDs into a home console directly or through a GB player type device. That would certainly justify the high capacity and high price of a portable game title.
 
PC-Engine said:
one said:
PC-Engine said:
Why would you need Blu-ray or HVD for a portable with a 4.5" screen? :LOL:
It'd be interesting for you to ask yourself back in 2000 why you'd need 1.8GB disc for a portable with a 4.5" screen... :p Basically, mainstream disc media will retain the 12cm size for the next decades, so a smaller disc size has its own markets elsewhere, and one of them is gaming.

Sure, but there was room to grow from 3" screens to 4.5" screens. Do you honestly believe we'll see a portable gaming system with 10" screens in the future? :LOL:

Resolution can improve - want HDTV on portables? :LOL:
 
PSP's screen resolution (480x272) is already quite high definition considering the screen size (4.3 inch). That's equivalent to having a resolution of 1280x720 on a 30 inch TV.
 
PC-Engine said:
But the GB line of games on carts have been doing extremely well. How well do you think PSP games starting at $40 will do sales wise? If it turns out that less people are willing to pay $40 for portable only game titles then there's less profit to be made from publishers/developers correct?
Actually, they're supposed to be maxing at $40 like DS games. (Though I imagine a larger number of them will try to get that $40 rather than sit at a $30 price point.) So I dunno. How WILL DS and PSP games sell at $40? (Keep in mind I don't put it past either to try to release the occasional AAA title at higher than $40, either.) Considering the top-selling games have been selling at right around the same price in Japan (4800 vs 5040, I believe), we pretty much see just how they sell in proportion to each other. (Which IMHO is "at about the same rates" but "not as well as was expected.")

Now how do you think the publishers feel if they can draw a more decent profit margin even at the same price with more visually stunning games? (Which in typically a decisive factor for games, but we don't know how that will play out yet in the portable field.)
 
Actually, it looks like there will be a fair number of $50 PSP games.

I'm hoping that the market drops off after launch and a lot of games drop after a few weeks as is the case with console games. You also have chains which offer promotional pricing like full price but with a gift card or something.

At DICE, Jack Tretton apparently showed data about the Average Selling Price being lower than last year and how games have short launch windows after which discounting begins. It's not good for publishers.
 
From looking at EBGames it looks like all of PSP's launch day games will be $49.99. All of the games listed for it are that price but the launch day games are the only ones with confirmed prices ATM.

The majority of DS games on the same site are $29.99 with a few being $39.99. The only DS games at a higher price are ones with unconfirmed prices.
 
GBA-SP games were (or are) most €59.99 here, they are the same price as PS2, and xbox games. Sure you can find them cheaper if you shop around, but that seems to be the rrp.

For a basic GBA game I've thought that is way too much, I'm glad the DS games should be cheaper here too.

I don't see why a game should be cheaper just because it is "only portable". Why does it decrease it's value that it is not playable in a home console. A PS2, GC or xbox game are not playable ina handheld, should they be priced lower because of that?
 
DS games in all the shops were $50 before the full information came out, at which point they dropped to $30-40. (Which was, as I remember, under a month before it launched.) I assume those were all placeholder "no greater than" prices, as they know the games will exist and when they're coming out and want the consumers to be able to pre-order and such, but they don't have the fully confirmed price points yet. They do, however, seem to know the prices that will not be gone over. (Or are making their best guess.) The DS was also listed at $199 on EBGames and GameSpot before the official pricing came out.

There have, however, been comments (on MagicBox for one, which makes the source material they're quoting harder to find since I can't search the japanese pages) saying "- Sony also announced that the price of PSP software will be around US$39.99" and while I can't confirm THAT yet either, it does match more logical expectations. The popular games are selling for barely more than their DS parallels (the equivalent of $3 or so), so I don't expect them to go hog-wild in the US either. And since we rarely have game prices that sit at the five-dollar mark, I find it more likely that they'll adopt the $40 plateau as well rather than go way higher.

Like I said, I do expect to see more games trying to sell at $40 that would usually be expected to sit at a lower tier, and there's always the possibility of some games trying to sell higher by $5 or even by $10, but I don't think that will be too common. And I don't think Sony wants to see any of that, at least, with launch titles. Perhaps later on after they've gathered a more sizable installed base and tracked pricing trends for a while.
 
Teasy, PC-Engine,

The distinction to be made between carts like those of the GBA and cards like Memory Stick, SD and the DS game cards is that the latter have significantly less in terms of a plastic shell encasing them and the entire shell is in almost direct contact with the circuitry inside with no buffer of empty space meaning stresses placed on the plastic (bending or impact stresses for example) will more directly translate to the components inside. The circuit board in GB/GBA carts is flush against one side of the plastic shell, but have about a quarter inch buffer from the other side, as well as the benefit of a generally larger, sturdier shell.
 
kaching said:
Teasy, PC-Engine,

The distinction to be made between carts like those of the GBA and cards like Memory Stick, SD and the DS game cards is that the latter have significantly less in terms of a plastic shell encasing them and the entire shell is in almost direct contact with the circuitry inside with no buffer of empty space meaning stresses placed on the plastic (bending or impact stresses for example) will more directly translate to the components inside. The circuit board in GB/GBA carts is flush against one side of the plastic shell, but have about a quarter inch buffer from the other side, as well as the benefit of a generally larger, sturdier shell.

Do you have a DS?
 
Not sure. But I would expect it and stuff like the MS DUO and miniSD's to be a lot more fragile as well.

Of course the question is how "realistically fragile they actually are in ways you're likely to do that wouldn't also crush a GBA cart as well." And on that point... <shrugs>

Usually people don't even both testing--they just know to treat their cards better. Certainly it's not something I've seen reviews for, nor is it anything so blatant that people have been warning others away from certain products for just that reason.
 
Guden Oden said:
In what way does that change any of the facts he stated :?:

If he had a DS he wouldn't be arguing about DS's carts lack of durability. DS carts are VERY tough and use the same plastic as GBA carts. Putting them into the same category as SD and MS with respect to toughness is just plain wrong. Not only that but strategic reenforcement points designed into a shell can negate the need for an empty space buffer. Then there's the size difference. The smaller DS carts do not need as much plastic to achieve the same stiffness. It's a basic law of physics. It's a lot easier to bend a 6" pencil than to bend a 2" pencil...

Edit: I don't know how durable MS is, but I do know that SD cards are also quite durable because they're not long like MS therefore you're not going to be bending SD cards in any way shape or form unless you intentionally try to. If you can propose a scenario where one would mechanically damage an SD card under normal use, I'd be more than happy to listen.
 
I'm not actually suggesting that any form of encased media is particularly lacking in durability but since encased disc media was initially cited as being significantly more fragile than other forms of encased media, it brought into question what factors were assessed for each of these formats and how they were weighted. If we're going to be working at a level of sensitivity that can define encased disc media as fragile, then we should put carts and cards under the same scrutiny.
 
cthellis42

All the PSP games with unconfirmed prices will have placeholder prices yeah (I intimated to that in my post earlier). All the PSP launch games are listed as having confirmed prices though and all of them are $49.99.

Also prices for Japanese DS and PSP games seem to be consistently at least $10 appart (from looking at places like Lik-Sang and Play-Asia).
 
Teasy said:
All the PSP games with unconfirmed prices will have placeholder prices yeah (I intimated to that in my post earlier). All the PSP launch games are listed as having confirmed prices though and all of them are $49.99.
Where have you seen confirmed, press-released prices, though? We don't usually see things of an unknown quantity showing up without a press release mention of some sort. Everyone so far has been shrugging and guessing.
Also prices for Japanese DS and PSP games seem to be consistently at least $10 appart (from looking at places like Lik-Sang and Play-Asia).
For this, I was actually going by the release-set prices (and looking mainly at the most popular titles, since it's harder to find a full list) as well as looking at online retailers I can follow, like Amazon Japan. Mario DS and Wario Touch (which account for most of their software sales out there it seems) did and still do retail for 4800 yen, and the price of most PSP games is 5040 retail. You can get them for less through places like Amazon (and other retailers, no doubt, but I'm not in a position to track them well) also -- 4080 and 4280 for the titles being considered here.

Import prices are, of course, going to have a greater discrepency because they can. The PSP is not available anywhere outside Japan yet, so current buyers must import and the demand is higher in general. It does not, however, reflect japanese retail prices, realistic purchase prices, nor does it reflect price discrepency in any other market currently either.
 
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