Sony To Release PSP Handheld Console In 2004

JayBonci writes "According to News.com, in a news conference before this year's E3, Sony announced its plans to release a new gaming handheld called PSP, slated for release late next year. Presumably, this would be to compete against Nintendo's Gameboy Advance, a clear winner in the handhelds department for years now. The games come on a new media format, half the size of a CD or DVD, holding 1.8 gigs. Other Gameboy competitors such as the Neo-Geo Pocket Color have suffered from small game libraries and the inability to get over the GBC/GBA's entrenched marketshare. Despite all of this, Sony isn't SNK, and obviously has a lot of muscle to push its way to where it wants to be. It will be an interesting fight."

Re:32-Bit

"How can they win getting into the market this late and not showing hardware that is signifigantly better?"

How did Sony with with the PS2? They got into the market far later than all except Microsoft; their hardware is far behind the XBox, and yet the PS2 is 3-to-1 the most popular game console of the current state-of-the-art. Sega, who's technology was often cutting edge and who had a long history in the industry, is now defunct in the hardware market. Nintendo, the oldest of the current crop, has true market force only among young children, relying on their classic intellectual property like Mario. Perhaps I am oversimplifying, but, then, I believe so are you.

Re:32-Bit

"How did Sony with with the PS2?"

Discounting Sega, they were first to market.

"They got into the market far later than all except Microsoft;"

You forget the generational cycles in the video game industry. To an extent, all bets are off when the next generation of console rolls out, which means (discounting the Dreamcast) Sony had the first-mover advantage.

"their hardware is far behind the XBox,"

Debatable. We're not exactly comparing a Genesis with an SNES.

"Sega, who's technology was often cutting edge and who had a long history in the industry, is now defunct in the hardware market."

Sega's problems were never because of either hardware or software. Their main pitfall was marketing. In my opinion, if the Sega Saturn had been backwards-compatible, Sony would be the one out of the hardware business.

"Nintendo, the oldest of the current crop, has true market force only among young children,"

Never underestimate the spending power of young children in large numbers.

While the PS2 may be outselling the Xbox and GameCube, the GBA is outselling the PS2 hands down. Perhaps even the PS2 and Xbox combined. Why do you think Nintendo is so keen to push GBA link-up with the GameCube?

"relying on their classic intellectual property like Mario."

You seem to believe that's a liability.

Re:32-Bit

Compairing the PS2's hardware to the X-Box is a bit hard.

The PS2's hardware was designed from the ground up to run games... where the x-box is basically.. a PC with some optimisations.

The PS2 has a lot of power still that a lot of companies don't (or can't) yet take advantage of. Unfortunatly one of the bad things about the PS2 is that its not eactly the easiest to program for. (Sony isnt exactly helping too much with this either.)

I have a feeling we are going to see games evolve over the years on the PS2... (Same thing that happened on the PS1. Compare almost any first gen PS1 game with one of the last gen PS1 games to see what I mean. They almost look like they are for totally different hardware platforms.) While on the other hand, graphics on the xbox will be more or less the same. (Developers already know how to program its hardware, obviously.)

Anyways... Im in no way trying to say the PS2 is more powerful than the X-Box. I am just trying to explain why compairing the two is kindof useless... atleast when your just going by pure specs. (Which btw, you dont mention anything about the PS2s processor design, which does have advantages over the xbox.)

Anyways... this is the same reason why you cant compare AMD and Intel chips directly just by specs.

Anyways... back to my beer =P

Re:RTFA, it is significantly better!

That's totally false. Have you heard of the BlueRoses engine?

http://www.raylight.it/Blueroses3dagb/blueroses. ht m

It's just one of many methods of achieving 3D on the GameBoy Advance. And it's no less *real* 3D than what was achieved on the Saturn or PSX.

There are true 3D games on the GBA as we speak. Some utilize true 3D and even blend them with paralax scrolling. Go look at IGN and you can get a good idea of what the GBA can do in terms of 3D. It's no powerhouse by any means, but it's up there with *early* PSX/Saturn quality in many ways.

Sony also introduced a new accessory for the PlayS

Sony also introduced a new accessory for the PlayStation 2, the I Toy. The USB camera will initially be used as a custom game controller

How will this work?
You jump up and down and little mario on the screen does the same?

And I thought dance mats were scary.

Battery Life

Ech, How long will two AA batteries run an optical drive and a color display with a backlight? My guess is about how long the Game Gear lasted on four AAs, a couple of hours.

Re:Battery Life

According to the actual press release [playstation.com], the battery will be a rechargable lithium-ion type battery, which means no need to buy batteries, as it seems it will be built in.

Re:Battery Life

You got a Game Gear to run a couple of hours on four AA batteries? How? Mine wouldn't run at all on four, seeing as it needed six.

Re:Battery Life

I would occasionaly use 5 batteries by sticking a paperclip into one of the slots. The one on the right of the left battery compartment powers the light IIRC. Not putting a battery in there just prevented the light from turning on.

Re:Battery Life

The Game Gear used 6 AA batteries. I have one sitting right here in my room. It sure chewed through them quickly.

Wouldn't it be kind of funny if this thing ended up being a PlayStation with a screen, integrated controller, and batteries? That's sure what it sounds like to me. Plus, if they designed it so that it could play PlayStation games that have been copied onto the little disks, then they would have a HUGE library of games already written for it. They would just have to burn them to little DVDs.

better article

here's a better article [reuters.com]; it goes into a bit more detail than the posted one.

Games...

I wonder what companies they will team with to create new games. In order to beat Nintendo, they're really gonna need an awesome initial lineup of games. I'm thinking at least 25 or so. And they'll need some big named games as well, like Castlevania and whatnot.

Also, what are they going to do to entice developers. Gameboy has such market penetration that it'll be hard to convince them that they can make more money with the new handheld. I expect to see a lot of games developed for both systems, or 3d ports of games for the PSP.

Re:Games...

I wonder what companies they will team with to create new games. In order to beat Nintendo, they're really gonna need an awesome initial lineup of games. I'm thinking at least 25 or so. And they'll need some big named games as well, like Castlevania and whatnot.
Most likely the usual players. Sony has what I would consider to be as strong of a lineup of 3rd party developers (Square, Enix, Konami, EA, Rockstar) with big-name games (Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, Metal Gear, SSX, Grand Theft Auto) as any company out there. And that's not even mentioning in-house titles like Gran Turismo.
Also, what are they going to do to entice developers
16:9. 3d audio. 1.8 GB storage on 60mm discs. Real-time NURBS rendering. USB 2.0. Not to mention the 50 million+ PS2's already sold worldwide.
How many MEGAbytes are GBA cartridges again?
I think this new system is plenty enticing. Development kits are coming out in June, which gives developers 1.5 years to work with the architecture before release in Dec. 2004, at which point Nintendo will still have the GBA at the forefront of their portable lineup (remember, the original GB went virtually unmodified for almost 10 years).

Re:Games...

How many MEGAbytes are GBA cartridges again?

It's hard to be sure given that marketing departments don't know the difference between bits and bytes, but 64MB is about right. And that should be plenty for anyone not trying misdirect people away from their lack of content by using heaps of shiney pre-rendered video. As a collector, I still prefer the cartridge format. Wipeout 64 removed any lingering doubt I had about the cartridge being a limiting factor.

Competition is wonderful

At least this will force Nintendo to compete with better technology rather than sticking us with ten year old graphics and sound.

GameCube format

The disk size and format (small DVD) sounds like the GameCube format. I beleve that format is a standard, like mini-CD.

Wonder if this is a new format or if they are using that one. Don't see why they would roll there own with there's already one existing. Of course this is the same company that came up with Beta-Max and Mini Disk.

portable format?

The games come on a new media format, half the size of a CD or DVD, holding 1.8 gigs

----

I sure hope their new format is solid state, because portable units are meant to be.. well.. portable. If it's a disk based format I doubt it will be nearly as durable as the cartridge based gameboy. Also battery time must be considered, if it's an optical disk the unit will not have a battery life nearly as long as the game boy advance.

I have a feeling this system might suffer the problems as some early PDA's: overpowered, too expensive, and not portable enough. Nintendo and Palm both tackled their respective markets aiming for two goals: Portability and Efficiency. I hope sony realizes this before going against the behemoth of Nintendo's Gameboy.

Nintendo reaction

They don't seem to be quaking in their boots. read this [yahoo.com]

lest we not forget....

...the Atari Lynx, the world's first color handheld (and still the best!); the NEC TurboExpress; the Sega GameGear; and the Sega Nomad. Making a portable that uses optical media is asking for trouble. A proprietary SD memory card would be the better route for vibrations, although the media would be more expensive.

Whoa .... 1.8 gigs?!

Wow, I forsee better uses for this thing than playing games. You can probably store 10 porno movies on it at the resolution of the LCD screen! It's a party in your pocket!

Why the game boy works

The Game Boy was so successful because it let KIDS, hince the name Game BOY, play games in the car that were not hard. The cartridges last forever, I know because I found one recently from 88 and it still works. The amount of games available is insanly high as well. The game boy did not eat batteries like the game gear and neo geo did. Also, the games on the Game Boy were unique to it. You cannot buy many of the games for the Nintendo itself like you could for the Sega version. Sure, you can play Sonic The Hedgehog on the Game Gear, but you can play the same game on the Sega console. This is why the Game Boy worked so well.........probobly alot more reasons also, but these are some that people have already posted about.

Additionally, I do not know why Sony is attempting to release an "all in one" portable machine that plays games, places calls, and serves as a PDA. That to me just seems like they are trying too hard to incorporate too many groups of people under the same device. If I want a PDA, I buy a PDA. If I want a cell phone, I buy a cell phone. I doubt there is a big market for people that want a cell phone/PDA/handheld game device. Why pay for this unless you want everything that comes with it? Just my $.02

The system that would rock

I want a portal gaming system that is similiar to the current mp3 player setup... except for games.

Yes, iPod for games!

Just USB or firewire the freaking games onto your gaming system. Sure I won't be able to get a GIG of information now... but come on! Size and jedi ninji graphics isn't the most important thing. Downloading is so more efficent than these little CDs or cartridges. You could even exchange games by connecting the gaming systems to each other.

What would even rock more would be if they would release the SDK for free. Then you could have fresh shareware/freeware stuff to try all the time.

Plus, you could have it play mp3, ogg, divx, whatever...

I would drool to have this setup... I would equally drool to program such a device.

Davak

UMD Pics

If you guys care, here is a webpage that shows pictures of the PSP's Universal Media Disc [gc-inside.com] that alleges to hold 1.8 GB.

Portable Play Station

Remember the Portable PlayStation [classicgaming.com]
On Classic Gaming? This guy ripped apart a Playstation One and a mini-TV and built his own back in September of 1991. It was cool because the CD for it spun freely on the back of it without an enclosure. The builder of it even called it the PSP. Hmm... wonder if Sony "stole" the name for theirs from his sight? =)

Re:Mud Slinging

George Harrison, a vice president at Nintendo of America, noted that much of the competition's success has been built on socially questionable games such as the street-crime romp "Grand Theft Auto 3." He promised Nintendo wouldn't go down that alley. "Mario will never start shooting hookers," he vowed.

Kind of reaching there huh guys? Rockstar told you to go piss up a rope didn't they? Lets face it, with games like GTA and Metal Gear as exclusive titles you guys didn't stand a chance. Zelda isn't _that_ good.

Nintendo has had that stance for, oh, 20 years now. Whether it's successful, or even reasonable, is debatable... but it's definitely NOT some new reaction to Sony. It is to a large part based on Miyamoto's attitude and design philosophy, visible from his earliest games.

Re:Mud Slinging

"Zelda isn't _that_ good."

Um... yes, it is. Zelda is one of the reasons that Nintendo is still in the hardware business instead of going the way of Sega. It's the strength of a handful of games like Zelda that kept the N64 afloat. After all, you didn't see the original GTA or MGS on the N64, either.

And while his motives may be questionable, he does have a point: Sony's main customer base are a completely different breed of people than Nintendo's die-hard customer base. They tend to be the people with a teenager mentality that will pay $$$ just to see some blood, tits and ass. In other words, most of the games on Sony's platforms have gone Hollywood.

Re:Too much overkill I think

Just FYI folks, this guy is a troll. Check out his posting history. Mod accordingly.