Piracy and the PSP 272
In a lengthy interview with Gamasutra about the state of the Playstation brand in 2009, Sony's senior vice president of marketing, Peter Dille, made some interesting comments about how piracy has affected their popular portable console, the PSP. He said, "we're convinced that piracy has taken out a big chunk of our software sales on PSP," a platform that was slow to start anyway due to the lack of early interest from game developers. Dille mentions that while they can fight piracy with hardware upgrades in new versions, that doesn't do anything to help the roughly 50 million PSPs already out there. He goes on to address other aspects of the PlayStation line, including complaints about the pricing and exclusivity.
Emulation (Score:5, Funny)
I rarely use my PSP to actually play PSP games anymore. I usually end up playing SNES or Gameboy games through emulation. That or watching porn (at least I'm honest).
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3)
I download all my ROMs, but I actually own the games.
Close enough. ;)
Re:Emulation (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe someone should clue Sony in to the fact that all the games they have "released" for the PSP fell into one of three categories:
#1 - Crappy "rpg" games that can't be played for anything less than a 2-hour stretch (Final Fantasy VII Crisis Core, Monster Hunter, Wild Arms XF aka Wild Arms Tactics, etc).
#2 - Re-releases of games people already owned a copy of for original Playstation.
#3 - UTTER CRAP (lookin' at you, Lumines, you cheapass soulless Columns-alike).
If there'd been some truly impressive, unique, and compelling games for the PSP, it would have driven sales. If they'd made the thing to function correctly, it would have driven sales.
Instead, compare PSP vs DS to Sega Nomad vs Game Boy. What do we have in each generation? Nintendo's had a lesser screen, less processing power, less cute/pretty visuals, but more battery life and kick-ass, fun to play games. Thus, Nintendo won.
Piracy, like communism, is just a red herring [uselessmoviequotes.com] Sony is using to try to distract people from the fact that they're a bunch of half-wits who would no longer know a good game if someone shoved it up their whiny asses.
Re:Emulation (Score:4, Informative)
Too true.
"Piracy" may screw with game sales, but will still have a number of the units sold (you can't play the game if you don't have the console).
PSP, on the other hand, sells like shit because there are no good games for it, UMD's suck battery life like no tomorrow (if I load a game image to the memstick I get 25% or more battery life ), and the very idea of buying a UMD movie instead of just encoding the DVD down for my memstick is fucking stupid.
I've had multiple friends ask me whether they should buy a DS or a PSP in the last year. Without hesitation, I pointed them to the DS. My PSP hasn't even been charged in the last six months, for chrissake.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
There's a cost barrier on UMD movies where it eventually makes sense.
Unfortunately for Sony that barrier is at about 5 bucks.
Re:Emulation (Score:4, Interesting)
I used my PSP while riding the train to & from work every day, about 35 minutes in each direction. As a result, I wound up playing Lumines more than anything else because every other game I tried was a complete joke, or, in the case of GTA, too convoluted & involved for easy pick-up & put-down gameplay. If I can't turn the game off at my stop without losing all of my progress, then it's not worth playing.
And yeah, UMD movies, why on earth would I want them!? So I can rewatch half of my DVD collection in "teeny weeny eyestrain-o-vision"? (Thanks, Yahtzee.) Fuck that.
Re:Emulation (Score:5, Informative)
the psp like the ds has a 'suspend' feature. just push the power switch for a split second up and release and the system goes into suspend and will start up again right where you left off once you do it again. Works in every game no need to get to a save point.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I've been using suspend to play Daxter over the last several months in various situations.
I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed Patapon and Puzzle Quest as well. My wife beat both the latter games before I did even, spending hours certain that she must be almost done.
To be honest, I quite like that Sony allows re-releases of older games (don't we usually complain that game companies do nothing with their old IP?), and creative games with no real interference (Flow, Flower, Calling all Cars, etc.)
Sony doesn't
Re: (Score:2)
This, and the hardware is just unappealing. I'm definitely in their core market, the 21-30 bachelor with tons of cash to burn, but
a) I already own a nintendo DS and
b) who gives a flip about a silly single (non-touch) screen gaming device these days?
I remember watching an episode of good eats at quakecon when they first came out (06?), for the novelty of it, but even then the speakers weren't loud enough for the three of
Re: (Score:2)
"who gives a flip about a silly single (non-touch) screen gaming device these days?"
Lots of folks. The DS screens are too small IMHO, and I don't care at all about using some dinky stylus when I can have a PSP that operates pretty similarly to any other playstation game controller.
Not only that, but the ability to hook it up to a TV is also good.
There aren't many great games for it (there are some) but the form factor and hardware IMHO have some advantages over the DS. IMHO because by the tone of your post
Re:Emulation (Score:4, Insightful)
The real reason is that the game industry is over produced, and past games compete with new products. How many games are released each year? Who can keep up with them all? We can't buy every game that is released. Then there's the fact that most of them aren't worth the $60 pricetag let alone the fact you can rent them for a fraction of the price or buy them used and get the same enjoyment out of them.
Truth be told the game market is suffering from over production.
Re:Emulation (Score:5, Informative)
PSP, on the other hand, sells like shit
Not really. 45 million sales is almost as much as the Wii, or the combined sales of the PS3 and 360. Only the DS leads it by a significant amount: 55 million more.
Re: (Score:2)
Yep I've mainly used my PSP as an MP3 player and portable TV (watching TV in bed, streamed from PlayTV on my PS3). Games and even UMDs can be bought v cheap these days, but I'm not often in a situation where I can make good use of mobile gaming capabilities.. the most I'm sitting down for outside of my house is maybe 10 minutes waiting for takeaway.. only usually enough for one full mission/race in your average game.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Monster Hunter is a bad example. You get max 50 minutes to finish any quest -- if you don't finish it by then, you fail it. some quests are shorter, and the "training school" quests are just a few minutes.
The main failing as I see it is the lack of interesting games.
Most of the games are just jap-ports, and while the nipponophile fanbois are dedicated and vociferous, there aren't that many of them. What's left after that can be summarized in two letters: EA. And if you're not into American sports or ur
Re:Emulation (Score:5, Insightful)
Jurassic Park was not rendered in *real time*. It could have been rendered on a 286 running at 8mhz if you were to wait long enough...
Re: (Score:2)
How much ram can a 286 address? That's an 8 bit processor, right? from wikipedia:
How many square inches of T-Rex skin do you think 16mb is? Not including the wire frame mesh, or course :)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Tile it.
Re: (Score:2)
Textures can be disk-resident for software rendering. With caching it won't make much difference to rendering time (scan-line rendering rendering has very coherent memory access patterns - not random access).
Re: (Score:2)
I thought it could address 16MB or RAM, not of diskspace?
Or does rendering a T-Rex have to be an atomic operation?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
> How much ram can a 286 address? That's an 8 bit processor, right?
No, 16-bit. Not that it makes your argument any less wrong :-)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Thus the words "modeled and".
Anyhow, it was just putting the power of the PSP into perspective. If you want another perspective, a typical SGI Indy was capable of running web, proxy, mail and DNS servers in the background while playing Doom 3 in the foreground.
For a handheld, the hardware just rocks, and isn't what holds the device back. The lack of support from Sony North America (SCEA) is the big problem -- they have been extraordinary recalcitrant and not supported games developers, but wanted a small
Re: (Score:2)
Oh don't get me wrong, the hardware does rock, that's why i bought one. Just the example didn't really depend on processing power that much.
As you say, the hardware is certainly not a problem. Its got all the ingredients there - plenty of flash storage capacity, cheap optical media for content, wifi, impressive colour display, good audio, HEAPS of processing power, etc - and good enough battery life (6hrs straight is plenty of time to be playing a portable on a single battery)... its the software that
Re:Emulation (Score:4, Interesting)
Kudos for the "Clue" reference.
I was considering buying a PSP actually. The piracy aspect entered into the equation. Then I looked at the games available and realised it wasn't worth it.
Yes, Sony, I wouldn't even PIRATE your games.
About the only game I'd like is Football Manager. I like the idea of a portable version of that. But it's not worth shelling out $200 on a console for just for one title. And I literally found no other game across the entire race that I was interested in.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
So, to which category do God of War: Chains of Olympus and Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops belong?
Yes, the PSP has its fair share of shitty games, but so does the DS and every other console in existence, portable or not. And when it comes to fun games, both have plenty of good ones, despite what the fanboys of either may say. The problem is tackling Nintendo in the portable arena is much like going against WoW in the MMORPG arena: inertia's a bitch, specially if you're a new player in the market.
Re: (Score:2)
So, that's two games that I can play on my PS2 anyway (yes, they're "special" versions. same basic gameplay)?
I own a PSP - i don't want the same content I have already played on PS2/other console.
Take a leaf out of nintendo's book and offer a half decent platformer, vertical shooter, puzzle games, etc.
I don't *want* some drawn out epic while I have 5 minutes to an hour to kill while I'm on the bus/plane, etc.
Sure, I'll buy a couple of that sort of game, but every time I go looking for something to
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
WoW didn't become #1 out of sheer inertia (how?), it became #1 by doing MMORPGing better and in a way that the average joe could appreciate. That's why it didn't simply convert the EQ and UO players or whatever was on the MMO market before WoW, it converted non-MMO players (which may not actually have been playing any games before) into MMO players.
Same for the Game Boy and DS, they became #1 by doing portable gaming better than the competition and by increasing the appeal of gaming (Game Boy: Tetris, DS: N
Re: (Score:2)
There are some unique games, Papaton for instance, but if you count the number of really playable games on that platform you probably come down to 5-8 games... around 6 of them being released within the first year!
Most people after a while being bored simply hack the platform open to play emulated games due to drought of really interesting games.
The last psp game I bought was Gods of War and Papaton since then nothing remotely interesting has been released...
(Btw. the same goes for the DS I am sort of sick
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I mean, what the hell do you mean "Nintendo Won"?
It wasn't a death-match. Sony has sold a lot of PSP's and made a bundle of cash on them. 50 million units is nothing to sneeze at.
Just because someone is more successful than you, it doesn't mean THEY WON and YOU LOST.
Get over yourself.
Re: (Score:2)
Poor excuse (Score:5, Insightful)
Piracy is rampant on the DS too, and there's tons of money being made there.
Re:Poor excuse (Score:5, Insightful)
Piracy is probably the main reason the PSP hardware sells at all.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't know how much a PSP costs to make but I think the days of hardware manufacturers subsidising their consoles must be on the way out.
When there's a significant amount of piracy it means you are not only subsidising the pirates but have to charge your actual game-buying customers more (or pay developers less) to try and recoup that money.
I think Nintendo have a sensible idea in selling reasonable hardware at a reasonable profit.
Re: (Score:2)
The PS3 was probably slightly different in that Sony were also using it to win the HD format war so there was more strategic advantage to them (and profit down the road) than merely hoping to sell a lot of games at some point.
That alone is probably enough to mean that the PS3 won't be a failure in an absolute sense.
It's unlikely there'll be such a circumstance for the next generation though.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Agreed. Buy a flash cart, a microSD card and you're off to the piracy races for the DS. Much less complicated than PSP modding even though that is relatively simple.
It boils down to a few things: price, game selection and allure of the hardware.
It automatically failed on price. Remember, when its price dropped the PSP received a decent boost in sales. Unfortunately, due to their sparse selection of quality games, I don't think i
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Funny how the PlayStation was the most pirated console of its time, yet it still beat the n64 which I'd assume was a real pain to pirate for. Now the DS is pirate to hell, and the psp is losing, oh how the tables have turned.
Of course it's piracy's fault (Score:2, Insightful)
It can't have anything to do with the quality of the media right?
Granted, I've never been much of a Playstation person, normally I tend to enjoy more of Nintendo's lineups, but I can't recall the last time I read about a PSP game that I had even the slightest interest in.
Putting that aside for a moment, do they actually have data to support this or are they just using piracy as an excuse to explain low sales numbers?
Re:Of course it's piracy's fault (Score:5, Insightful)
What probably happened is they picked a number for how much money they wanted to make and when they didn't make it blamed it on piracy.
Physical media, too (Score:2)
Spinning optical discs + portable player = disaster.
Does anyone know if there's a way, beyond piracy, to play a PSP game off a flash card of some sort?
Re: (Score:2)
Why is it a disaster?
I get decent battery life (6 hrs), which is pretty impressive considering the screen, 3d hardware, etc. Better than some laptops, with a battery WAY smaller.
I'll gladly take 6 hr battery life and a decent amount of cheap optical storage for media over ROM based storage and an hour or two more battery life any day.
The PSP has a "UMD cache" feature that you can turn on that will reduce the disc access.
Re: (Score:2)
Unless, of course, you're running homebrew to run pirated games, in which case the extra installed stuff has already eaten up the RAM that would have been used for caching...
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Lol.. fight piracy with hardware upgrades... (Score:2)
... as if that won't also get cracked. lmfao.
I call it the "Nerd Cold War". Company X is getting products pirated and hires nerds to come up with countermeasures... Piracy scene nerds then whack away at it for a little longer, maybe even a whole month, and then crack it and everything is back to where it was... Company X adds new stupid idea, Piracy Nerds step up and destroy it.... AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN.
30 Million Cannabis users and the US thinks they are doing something about it by making it illega
Re:Lol.. fight piracy with hardware upgrades... (Score:5, Funny)
You can say "fucking" here. Fake cursing is pretty silly in a forum that doesn't censor.
Re: (Score:2)
Do it for the kids. :)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I do it to the kids. :)
Re:Lol.. fight piracy with hardware upgrades... (Score:5, Informative)
That's what Profanity Blacklist [slashdot.org] is for.
Re: (Score:2)
Perhaps his employer censors and he'd like to keep his job.
By the way if you don't think slashdot censors try writing a medium length post full of obscenity. The tolerance is pretty high but the filter is there (or at least was last time I checked which admittedly was some time ago). If you're not an angry foul mouthed fool, and you're not quoting one and adding your own obscenities you'll probably never encounter the filter.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
"You can say "fucking" here. Fake cursing is pretty silly in a forum that doesn't censor."
Yep, no problem saying it on here, actually doing it is a totally different matter. ;)
Re: (Score:2)
I don't see your problem with cursing; as it happens, there are also europeans here who don't share that specific american brain-damage (scissors-in-the-head) regarding curse- and cuss-words.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Whats to crack? The PS3 comes with a generally open hardware platform, allows you to upgrade the HDD without voiding the warranty, and you can install alternate OSs without a modchip.
Sony made it so people don't even care to because pretty much everything people do with modded consoles is made available.
Re:Lol.. fight piracy with hardware upgrades... (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Sony made it so people don't even care to because pretty much everything people do with modded consoles is made available.
Except pirate games... and now play PS2 games.
Re: (Score:2)
It's not worth the effort. With the exception of just a few exclusives, all the games worth playing on the PS3 are also on the 360 or PC.
Flash beats UMD (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Also, you don't have to pay exorbitant shipping fees to get games that they never bothered to release in your country, despite having localized it for your language. (Or do Americans generally have difficulty understanding the Queen's English?)
Re: (Score:2)
No, but a great deal of American's do have difficulty speaking coherent English of any type.
(well, now that I think of it, so do many of the British)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Just an FYI:
Pecos is a Navajo word. Most Americans can't agree on how to pronounce it because the Navajo use vowel sounds that don't exist in English.
My user name is Pecosdave because like Pecos Bill (well, he was a Texas immigrant, but never mind that) I'm from the Pecos Valley, in Texas. My ancestors fought and died so anonymous coward asshats like you don't call us British anymore.
Re: (Score:2)
Don't forget you can carry around a bunch of games with 1 memory stick, plus media and music, emulators, etc. The real value in the psp was it could do a lot more then just games. Sony's retarded restrictions to try to promote their formats, media and agenda make a non-hacked psp look like a worthless pile of crap next to a hacked one, even if you never intend to pirate a game. If they wanted to make the psp a runaway success, they should have allowed homebrew from the start, and sold games online to be
Re: (Score:2)
not in the, "WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU IN MY BAG?!" benchmark. Otherwise, pretty true. The only problem is that the cost of stamping a UMD is still marginally cheaper than shipping out spare memory cards and online sales have the problem of, "oh shit, my memory card/hard drive/etc just ate itself, what now?" factor. WiiWare, XBLA and PSN have proven that online sales can work on consoles, there are still other hurdles to jump through.
Still few games (Score:2)
Nah, it's the games (Score:2)
The PSP was/is *truly* a "portable Playstation". Which is neat, technically, but the games just don't lend themselves to a portable gaming system.
The DS is probably the single greatest portable gaming hardware so far. The touch screen is just the perfect input devices for the kind of goofy, simple, easy-to-play games that most people want on a system that they'll likely only play for 20 minutes at a time. Basically, the DS has lots of games that appeal to the casual player. Much like the Wii.
You have to al
Re: (Score:2)
I have a PSP and a DS. For exactly the same reasons I prefer my PSP.
I don't like futzing with a touch screen. Granted most of the games I play don't require it. The New Super Mario Brothers on uses it for reserved power ups and changing worlds (as far as I'm concerned) so I accept that, the rest of the games I use such as the Final Fantasy games allow me to just use the cross pad as I always have. I actively avoid games that require me to use the stylus.
The PSP on the other hand is a Solid Old Skool des
Re: (Score:2)
I am being just a bit unfair on the touchscreen. I really don't want to jump back and forth.
I find the idea of playing the new version of Broken Sword on the DS tempting, especially since it has new/expanded levels. But since I originally played the game on Gameboy Advanced (no longer have thank you Hurricane Ike) and I now have it on PSX, even though it's expanded I'm not sure I want to buy it again for a little expansion. If they were to port/update Gabriel Knight Sins of the Fathers on the other hand.
yeah, those lucky bastards at nintendo (Score:3, Insightful)
The difference between DS and PSP (Score:3, Insightful)
The big difference between the DS and PSP is the target market. The PSP was targetted at gamers. Big mistake. Gamers know about piracy, and are becoming more and more accustomed to it by the minute.
Sony, then, pitched their product at people who were never really going to buy all that much.
Nintendo's product has found it's way into handbags and schoolbags. The kids get legitimate games as birthday presents, and the travelling woman picks up a random brain-trainer or somesuch while stuck in departures wai
Many things are hurting the PSP... (Score:5, Interesting)
First, it's the frigging number of games it has - barely any. Take a look at the shelf space the PSP has, and it's very little compared to its competiror, the DS. Heck, I've seen more shelf space dedicated to PSP hardware and PSP accessories, than PSP games.
Secondly, the lack of releases - you can almost count the number of games the PSP will have coming out in the year ahead on fingers and toes. New release lists on the PSP are remarkably skimpy. Heck, I'm sure there are more games for the PSP released every month for the first few years than a year nowadays. Retail space for the PSP has been shrinking - even the PS2 gets more shelf space!
Third, the pirates offered a better product. Games load quickly off memory stick, and save battery life as well. And heck, you can dump your games yourself easily nowadays (insert UMD into PSP, enable USB on the UMD drive, and a little .iso file is ready for you to copy off - you don't see the contents of the disk, just the ISO file).
The competition, the Nintendo DS, is far easier to pirate for (a memory cart is direct-mapped for 128MB, without bankswitching... thus most games are under 128MB in size, while PSP games can be 1.8GB or so). But it has a lot of games, tons more released practically daily, and many that sell for years. Enough so that practically everyone can find a set of games they'll like.
Sony basically abandoned the PSP once they released the PS3. They could've released firmware updates that let you dump UMD disks to a memory stick (locked to that console with DRM blah blah blah and requiring the original UMD, a la the Xbox360), but no, we get crap feature updates. About the biggest thing in the firmware update was... Skype.
Re: (Score:2)
DS cards are not direct mapped, you read them sequentially, and store the data into main RAM. The GBA was directly mapped and executed off the cartridge.
DS is SD spelled backwards (Score:2)
DS cards are not direct mapped, you read them sequentially, and store the data into main RAM. The GBA was directly mapped and executed off the cartridge.
Unless tlhIngan was talking about SLOT-2 cards on the DS and DS Lite (e.g. SuperCard) and just got the size wrong. But he's right that seek times on a DS card or an SD card are still a boatload faster than a UMD, even if they are slower than XIP through SLOT-2.
Re: (Score:2)
Well you basically can say the same regarding Nintendo, they basically abandoned the DS with good releases when the Wii came out, the DS is fed mostly with shovelware nowadays with a few good titles from third party publishers...
As for the PSP I dont think piracy really was the doom of the platform, the lack of releases was more an issue, after a strong first year suddenly the release numbers went down the drain. Good releases like Gods of War sell well on the platform despite heavy piracy (which also is th
Restrictions reduce its value to consumers (Score:2)
It's a great little device. I'd use it a lot more if I could use SCUMM or other emulation. (I know I can, but I can't be bothered to get the things set up). The restrictions around the PSP make me use it less.
My PSP is hacked. (Score:5, Interesting)
I have a 16GB Pro Duo in it. I have a bunch of PS1 and PSP games on that memory stick, I'm using compression but there's plenty of room left.
I own every PSP and PS1 game on there. Seriously, I have the disk or UMD for every game on there. Why did I hack my PSP? Because I don't want to carry the fucking UMD's around! I tried that at first, UMD's don't take abuse nearly as well as Game Boy Cartridges did. My Street Fighter Alpha 3 UMD has the clear window separated from the rest of the UMD casing. (that particular game has its own smaller Pro Duo - it gets confused by large ones) I can snap it back out and use it, I'm considering a drop of super glue but the memory stick is sort of nullifying my desire to do that.
I guess you can call me "an honest pirate" since I'm not actually pirating anything, but I use all the pirate utils.
My take on Sony - I was criticizing them for ignoring their customers. PSP 1000 people hacked it to do things Sony never intended, so they came out with a 2000 that was (initially) harder to hack. People hacked it, so they came out with a 3000 that's incredibly difficult to hack. The customer spoke up and said "I want my PSP to do these things" and Sony, instead of making it happen, said no.
If the PSP 4000 rumors are correct, it shows Sony is beginning to listen. The 4000 supposedly doesn't have a UMD drive and will be pure on board storage.
That's a step in the right direction, but don't kill physical media just yet.
I like physical media. I have 10GB worth of music on my iPhone - I ripped all 10GB off of CD's that are in display racks in my living room. All of my PSP and PS1 games on my PSP have disk either in my office closet or in a CD binder near my entry (Hurricane Ike killed the original cases/manuals)
Please don't go pure online distribution only. I don't trust it. We've already seen a couple of DRM laden distribution companies go belly up. We don't need you "Pulling a Sony" when you're tired of us.
To be fair, I bought pirate hardware for my Game Boy Advanced - cheap Chinese crap was broke when it arrived so I never actually got to use it. My reasons were the same - not to pirate, but to not carry the carts around. A coworker is doing this with his DS, I think I'm going to do this with my DS also.
I feel more comfortable knowing if my whole backpack gets stolen I lose my PSP and my DS, but when it comes down to it, I only have to replace the systems (and the memory cards) not the systems and every damn game I had for them.
Between two major theft incidents (both inside of locked personal area's) and hurricane Ike I've lost lots of media. I know how much it sucks to replace it all. The less at risk I put my media the happier I am. I like the idea of digital distribution since there's no media or hardware to risk, I just don't trust the providers to offer it to me for the rest of my life any time I want it.
Re: (Score:2)
You're not alone, I modchipped my Wii and I bought Mario Galaxy and as well as other games.
Truth be told once you have "open access" to a console you can't really go back to having it locked down.
Re:My PSP is hacked. (Score:4, Interesting)
Let me tell you, you're not alone.
I'm not so concerned about losing my games along with my PSP because I can either just re-rip all of those games and/or I have the game ISOs on my Macbook Pro.
Due to the nature of my job I live nine or ten months out of the year out of a backpack and a duffel bag. For me, space is a premium. I have 40 game UMDs. Another copy of each of those is on my HD or on a memory stick. UMDs and their attendant cases take up a stupid amount of space. I paid for it. I want access, dammit! Lumines is just as good today as it was when it was first released.
Even when I'm in the US/EU/EA, I don't want to have to make a choice in which games I carry. What kind of ridiculous shit is that in 2009?
I have the DS as well, also hacked and with every game on storage and flash. It's incredibly easy to lose these infernal cartidges.
There's a lot of stuff Steam got wrong, but there's stuff it got right, too. I get on any computer and log in with my Steam account, I can play anything in my Steam library. If just copy the game files, I don't have to download it for each machine, either.
Face it, physical media is dead. I don't want that outdated and obsolete shit anymore. Sell me what I want, digital distribution, cloud access and a good sized local cache.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Avoid superglue, unless you're very skillful with it. The vapours from the glue collect inside the casing and ruin the UMD. Almost all of my discs are in a similar condition to yours due to a poor game case choice.
Game Starvation! (Score:4, Interesting)
As a gamer, I've had my eye on a PSP for a while now, mainly for the piracy/hack factor. Its a nice little system that would be great for emulation and PSP games. But what is killing this system, other than the DS, is the Game Starvation. All one needs to do is compare the review lists at IGN (or your favorite game site). Games come out weekly for the DS, in bulk. Games come out in spurts for the PSP, a few here and there, sometimes months apart.
Plus when you go to the store, the PSP section always looks like a clearance section. Few games, broken/off displays, lots of empty spaces signifying "better days," and the same few crap games they had last time you stopped in.
Games sell systems. And "50 million" PSP gamers should be large enough to sell new, quality content to. Lack of games and a great system to do emulation on equals high piracy numbers. And lack of software sales is DIRECTLY ATTRIBUTABLE to available content. Just put together a Virtual Console like Nintendo with legal emulation and see how your software sales do.
Sony, want to turn your PSP software sales around? Then 1) sell the damn thing to developers! Your claimed user base should be more than enough to attract some good shops with interesting ideas and IP. 2) Hire new merchandise reps. Your store displays suck. 3) Keep publishing older games and keep them in stock. To sell more games they have to be available. 4) Stop trying to make every game a port or offshoot of a PS2/PS3 game.
Wait.. (Score:2)
HomeBrew! (Score:4, Insightful)
I bought my PSP in order to have something to do on my daily commute, I thought I'd play games on it, I played through God Of War, and a few others, and started to realise that nothing came close to GoW in terms of fun, so it languished as a portable mp3 and aac player for a while
I ended up sticking hacked firwmare on it just to see what all the fuss was about, and now I can use it to play just about any music and low enough spec video, as an ebook reader and a GPS unit, hasen't seen a game for probably 6 months.
If Sony had this sort of stuff built in, it'd probably sell a bit better.
PSP user (Score:2, Interesting)
Remember that custom firmwares actually allow playing legal copies of new games. Back when I bought my PSP (mostly for development and emulators etc.) I decided that I'd buy only a few initial releases (of which Mercury was clearly the best) and no more, as back then it was already obvious that new games started "requiring" newer firmwares (although in most cases this is nothing more than comparing version string in game againist one that PSP reports back). Back then 1.5 was, thanks to its vulnerabilities,
Piracy on the DS is ten times easier. (Score:3, Interesting)
Piracy is the perfect excuse. Poor sales? Blame piracy, no one gets fired and they keep doing what they've been doing. The PSP is a neat system, which had a botched launch and poor support since. I had it and enjoyed it for a while, but it couldn't hold up to my DS. Why?
Piracy on the DS is much more fun. A flashcart with memory card can be had for under ten bucks. They do everything out the box, getting data on them is a cinch. If it truly is piracy that has killed the PSP, then the DS should have been gone and buried. It is not fun nor easy to play homebrew or emulators on most PSPs, especially the more recent. Yet the DSi has a $10 fix.
Perhaps one day Sony will stop making excuses and make systems and games that I want to buy.
Sony sells these things because they're cracked (Score:2, Interesting)
My first post on Slashdot (long time reader) and I had to chip in about this.
I have original PSP, that was bought for me as a present a couple of years ago. I was given 2 films with it, and two games. Now I'll be honest, I'm a pirate and I pirate everything. My golden rule is - if it was good enough to play/read/watch - then I'd buy it, which is why I saw all of my fave films at the cinema, then bought them on DVD, then ripped them to hard drive. If they're not good enough, I just download them - so I have
Re:Scapegoat (Score:4, Insightful)
Not if a large enough percentage of your user base pirates already. There simply won't be enough people that -do- buy.
If anything, the growing attitude of "don't buy it, get this firwmare patch and download it here instead!" will hasten the death of systems like the PSP. It'll take a while, but eventually even good games will fail.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Not if a large enough percentage of your user base pirates already.
You're right. If 50 million people suddenly start using piracy solely as a way of not spending money on the PSP, they won't make money.
If anything, the growing attitude of "don't buy it, get this firwmare patch and download it here instead!" will hasten the death of systems like the PSP. It'll take a while, but eventually even good games will fail.
When PC gaming dies and Nintendo no longer sells ROMs on the Wii, I'll be happy to entertain this thought. Right now, niether history nor reality are backing this assumption up.
PC gaming costs $2,400 (Score:2)
When PC gaming dies
It was stillborn. If you have three gamers in the house and one who visits, the hardware costs $2,400 (four PCs with monitor at $600 each) and the games cost $160 each (four copies at $40 each because few games support Starcraft-style spawn installations). I think the lack of PC titles that support the console-style model of a big screen and USB gamepads comes from the fact that since the late 1980s, most monitors with a VGA input have been sized for one person. HDTVs can display PC signals, but those haven
Re: (Score:2)
The way you head off that attitude is to, at the very least, provide as compelling an experience as the pirates.
For example: Until very recently, I pirated games, not because I didn't want to spend the money, but because I didn't have the time [slashdot.org]. Piracy simply gave me a better experience, even when you completely ignore the price.
And yes, once piracy is entrenched -- once you've made it easy to not feel bad about piracy, and actively driven large numbers of people to piracy (Spore was widely boycotted, yet wa
Re: (Score:2)
Give me a frickin' manual worth shit!
Give me an on-line account/multiplayer/community!
DON'T make my life harder for having purchased the game. As stated many times on here (by myself previously, too), all DRM does is fuck over your PAYING customers. History has shown that no protection scheme is invulnerable. Spend the money on online/printed content instead, and I'll gladly pay for it.
Re: (Score:2)
Forcing game companies to compete with pirates who are effectively free to break all sorts of laws is a bad idea.
Also, lots of times pirates are free to distribute trojans, since their victims aren't likely to incriminate themselves for copyright infringement.
In fact, warez have been a proven vector for malware.
I think that game companies should go hard after pirates, provided of course they have a damn lot better aim than the slipshod steamroller that is the RIAA.
Having said that, I concurrently believe th
Re: (Score:2)
We used to just set sv_lan 1 at LAN parties
What do you do if you want to host a gaming party, but most of the invitees don't have a PC that they can bring because they aren't out of high school yet?
Re:Scapegoat (Score:5, Informative)
I'm a game dev. The consensus among people I know who make games for hand-helds is that the PSP isn't worth developing for because of piracy.
So whatever the people here think, one thing is true. Piracy is killing the PSP. Nobody makes games for a platform when they know the vast majority of the buyers will pay zero.
I know slashdot readers like to stomp and flame and complain about this, but the people you need to whine at are the people hacking PSP games, not game developers who have bills to pay just like everyone else.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
What matters is fear of piracy. Its a huge financial commitment for a game dev to actually put the game out, market it, etc. and the high risk of having it pirated instead is a major issue.
Re: (Score:2)
Disclaimer: I own a psp with a library of legal games (about 6 or 7). No bootlegs of *PSP* games on it.
Problem i see with the PSP is the shortage of actual software I want for the platform.
I recently hacked mine for the following purposes:
If they provide software i'm interested in for mobile gaming, I will (and have) purchased it. But more often than not, I walk out of a shop empty handed or with a game for
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Piracy Helps, someday they will notice that. (Score:4, Insightful)
Its funny how pirates always claim all the games they have cracked are not worth buying.
Its easy to assign something as worthless when you took it for free isn't it?
Nobody is making psp games because people with an overblown sense of self-entitlement are pirating them as a matter of routine.
Why would any sane dev just make a game that nobody would buy? do you work for free too?
Re: (Score:2)
If anything, the piracy has HELPED PSP sales. The reason there's 50m units is because they can be opened to do what you want.
Perhaps, but if they make a loss on each piece of hardware and recoup the loss through software sales, then they're losing more money through selling PSP's that people don't buy games for.
If piracy is hurting Sony, then they need to charge more for the hardware.
Easy to say, but how much would you be willing to pay for a games hardware? If an Xbox 360 had cost £500 at launch I sure as hell wouldn't have bought one.
HandBrake + Windows + CSS? (Score:2)
Handbrake your Disney DVDs
DVDs published by Disney use CSS, and the Windows version of HandBrake doesn't descramble CSS. (The Mac version uses VLC, and the Linux version uses libdvdcss, but the Windows version has nothing.) For users of PCs that run Windows as the primary operating system, what ripper would you recommend running before transcoding the video to PSP format with HandBrake?