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Portables (Games)

Predictions Of Further PSP Release Delay Floated 43

Posted by simoniker from the grapevine-says-yes dept.
Thanks to CNN Money for its article discussing the possible further delay of Sony's PSP handheld. According to the piece: "Activision CEO Bobby Kotick told investors yesterday that his company does not expect the PSP to launch in North America until the second quarter [of 2005]." It's explained: "The PSP was originally scheduled to go on sale worldwide this holiday season. In February, Sony pushed back the U.S. launch of the system to the first quarter of 2005, but said it still planned to launch on schedule in Japan." The article also comments on possible PSP battery life issues, suggesting "...those putting games together for the system say Sony has urged them to avoid streaming game levels from the Universal Media Disk, to lengthen the system's battery life."
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Predictions Of Further PSP Release Delay Floated More

Predictions Of Further PSP Release Delay Floated

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  • Interesting (Score:2, Interesting)

    by buffer-overflowed ( 588867 )
    Considering the entire disc-reading assembly consumes far less power than the display.

    IMO, the PSP is sure to suck on the battery life w/o some serious revisions. Prove me wrong Sony, you have no choice.
    • well Sony said depending on the game the battery life could be anywhere from 2-10 hours, that avefrages out to about 6 hours, i don't play games for that long unless i don't plan on moving anyways, in that situation they make a handy little device called a Power Adaptor, and i'm sure some smart company(hopefully Sony) will make a car-kit for it, hell, i'm sure you could find a car kit at Radio Shack for $15 if you looks =D

      • Re:Interesting (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Naffer ( 720686 ) on Thursday August 19, 2004 @02:46AM (#10009847) Journal
        2 to 10 hours doesn't average out to 6 hours. It means that if you push it hard you'll get two hours, and if you hardly use it at all you'll get 10. If you're playing a video game that is powering the screen, UMD disk, audio, and processors, you can bet you won't get 6 but something closer to 4.
        • "It means that if you push it hard you'll get two hours, and if you hardly use it at all you'll get 10"

          no, it means thatif the game company makes the game constantly stream load you'll get 2 and if the company makes the game grab whats needed then never touch the UMB then you'll get 10

          as for 6 being the average... the math part of my brain is shutdown for the night =D

  • Building hype... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by dmayle ( 200765 ) on Thursday August 19, 2004 @12:54AM (#10009428) Homepage Journal
    Oh, come on... Everyone knows that they should just release around 1000 of them this holiday season, with plenty of copies of all the shipping titles, so that, when Christmas comes around, there will be an artificial scarcity, and people will think they are more popular than they are. This will be be a feedback cycle that will keep pushing hardware sales, and allow them to sneak into the market. Hey, it worked with the PS2, didn't it?

    • Re:Building hype... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by thryllkill ( 52874 )
      I agree with everything in your post except of course the part about the PS2 sneaking into the market. Prior to the current generation of consoles there was really only two players, Sony and Nintendo (I know I know, Sega was there too, but come on, were they ever really a threat to either Sony or Nintendo?). With the N64 and its down right dismal sales record Sony stood tall as the market leader. While the scarcity of hardware certainly did drum up not only press, but consumer ferver as well, the PS2 har

      • Re:Building hype... (Score:1, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward
        I could be wrong (and please prove me wrong if you can), but prior to the PS2's release, wasn't it the other way around? Something about how more N64 units sold in the first year than PlayStation sold up until the day PS2 was released? I don't ever remember PlayStation being more popular than Nintendo until the PS2 came out, which of course blew everything out of the water.
        • actually the PSX was out just prior to the N64s release and it pulled ahead to the point where i don't think the N64 ever did catch up, most of the information i've read says that Nintendo lost by a mile but i can't seem to find actual sales figures for the time anywhere and during that time i didn't really care who was leading (still don't really, i play games i like, not games that sell the most)

          it makes sence though, PSX had Gran Turismo, Final Fantasy 7, Resedent Evil, and hoards of other killer apps

        • Re:Building hype... (Score:3, Informative)

          by Mike Hawk ( 687615 )
          I found this. [gamesinvestor.com] The nitty gritty is that PlayStation hit 99 million installed and N64 peaked out at 33 million. Unless you are suggesting that Sony sold about 66 million PlayStation units after the PS2 came out? The trick with actually believing Nintendo's numbers is they always slyly try to state how many systems they have installed and count the wildly successful Game Boy in those numbers. And I'm the bad guy around here because I actually have this information and everyone else thinks I'm a troll becau

    • Re:Building hype... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by hal2814 ( 725639 ) on Thursday August 19, 2004 @08:40AM (#10011254)
      And if anybody gets on of these scarce PSPs, please send me your box so I can sell it on Ebay for $400.

  • How to suck eggs (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Kris_J ( 10111 ) * on Thursday August 19, 2004 @02:42AM (#10009833) Homepage Journal
    "...those putting games together for the system say Sony has urged them to avoid streaming game levels from the Universal Media Disk, to lengthen the system's battery life."
    Any half decent developer will have worked this out without needing any prompting by Sony. In fact, I doubt the quote is true. Instead, I'm sure that developers are busily determining how best to trade off the disc against RAM against CPU time. If CPU time is "cheaper" than reading from disc, then files will be compressed on the disc and decompressed into RAM -- unless RAM is so tight that data has to remain compressed in RAM until needed (or the SPU is so slow that decompressing data slows disc access, since power drain is related much more to the disc spinning than data actually being read). But if running the CPU at 100% impacts battery life (or the overhead affects game performance) too much, developers will still stream data off the disc. This is where real programmers shine and development houses that rely on high level development tools suffer.

    Of course, if they'd gone with cartridges, the power draw and loading times would be significantly less.

    • "Of course, if they'd gone with cartridges, the power draw and loading times would be significantly less"

      but the games would be significantly smaller, something like the Direct port of GT4 onto the PSP wouldn't be possible.

      • Re:How to suck eggs (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Kris_J ( 10111 ) *

        but the games would be significantly smaller,

        I dispute that. FMV sequences are not only stupid, but increasingly pointless given the quality of realtime rendered animation. Given the relatively small amount of RAM available, I would be seriously suprised if a game with no heavy use of FMV and speech had trouble fitting on a cartridge given that re-writable flash RAM in a profile as cramped as SD is roughly A$1 a MB.

        This might have been an issue when the N64 came out, it isn't anymore.

        • i don't mean FMV sequences, of which a game like GT4 has maybe 2(intro and credits) i mean serious, quantity of gaming goodness, GT4: Mobile will have 500+ cars and 100+ Tracks, those numbers would not be possible on a Cartridge, not yet anyways, even large SD cards are only about 512MB, GT4 uses in the GB of space

          • even large SD cards are only about 512MB, GT4 uses in the GB of space

            And Sony's UMDs have the volume of at least half a dozen SD cards, so there's penty of space to play with physically. Price is an issue, but GBA games are already routinely 32MB and I doubt that A$32 of the retail price is the media. A 32MB ROM probably only costs a few dollars to produce. Sony's new UMDs probably cost them significantly to develop and to setup the factory to produce. If battery life is such an issue, then they woul

    • Re: Real developers... use Renderware (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I don't know where you've been for the past 15 years, but nobody does low level programming for games anymore.

      Everyone uses Renderware [renderware.com]. Just look, over 500 titles released or in development use Renderware and it's not that old. That's 1 in 4 titles (I'm reading this from the site). Grand Theft Auto 3 Vice City uses Renderware. Peter Molyneux's The Movies uses Renderware. Broken Sword 3 Sleeping Dragon uses Renderware. Everyone friggin' uses Renderware. And you know what? They aren't all the same game. He
      • I'm sorry, but all the games you mention, and all the games listed on the Renderware site would fall into my category of uninspired cookie-cutter games. To be fair, as would 90% of the titles on offer at the moment. Britney Spears' music sells particularly well too, doesn't mean it's not pap. Slick advertising and well managed licenses does not an innovative game make.
        • You originally talked about "half-decent" dev houses - innovative games weren't even mentioned. What is your complaint exactly?

          (And why would Renderware be advertising all the niche games that their engine is used for? They are trying to sell their engine to developers as a product that can be used to make successful games in a variety of genres. The existing list does that perfectly. Sports games, action games, adventure games, strategy games, platforming games... They don't mention racing games, but hope

          • I would love to know what your standards are for an inspired

            "Sonic and Knuckles" is high on the list. A console game that not only stands on it's own, but lets you replay two previous games with a new character. Another example would be "Boktai: The Sun is in Your Hand", where a light sensor means that the game plays differently if you're out in the sun rather than inside. Mostly, my view of innovative surrounds hardware integrated with software. The games that were released for the Mega Drive and SNE

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