My wife and I were fighting like hammer and tongs. She won, she had the hammer - Tommy Cooper
|
|
|
PSP will not die any time yet
THE DARK satanic rumour mill has been churning out a line which claims that Sony is about to drop its PlayStation Portable.
Last year the lack-lustre game gizmo had a renaissance when the PSP Slim hit the streets and that classics such as Daxter could be played alongside new titles such as Star Wars Battlefront: Renegade Squadron and God of War: Chains of Olympus.
However this year it looks like Sony isn't keen on announcing many new PSP games, which many are seeing as a prelude to it been cut.
According to IGN, PlayStation Sony Director of Hardware Marketing John Koller denied that the PSP was toast.
He said that the PSP is a high-growth business for Sony and a highly demanded product. Indeed it is "it's red hot" which given Sony's history with exploding batteries was an unfortunate term for him to use.
Koller said that there had been a calibration amongst publishers of how to publish for the PSP. Lots of publishers were unsure about who was purchasing and who owned the PSP.
He added that there are a lot of games coming up which the publishers have not mentioned yet and it was a "really good time to be a PSP owner". µ
L'Inq
IGN
Share this:
Share
Given PSP sales are as good or better then PS3 sales on a weekly basis and it's the only handheld to ever hold it's own against Nintendo in that market it's rather unlikely that it's going anywhere. Add in the extra functions they keep adding as well as the interconnectivity between it and the PS3 I'd say the lack of titles announced for it has more to do with them focusing money on PS3 software development or trying to improve the quality of PSP games by reducing the number in development as such allowing those titles in development larger budgets.
I've got two of the damn things, and my son has another one. 90% of my use is listening to podcasts (more listening than watching). Program the PSP to download a bunch of podcasts overnight, and the next day kick back, plug in the earphones, and listen to several half-hours worth of nice BBC radio shows or NASA updates or whatever. It's almost ideal for this purpose. Super convenient and portable. If it did nothing else, I still have one for that purpose alone.

Google "RSS 4 PSP" for my mini-blog of my favorite PSP-compatible podcasts.

I've got the PSP camera. It's nothing to get excited about. Works 'ok' outdoors in sunshine, but it is almost perfectly incapable of taking acceptable pictures in any challeging conditions.

Bask in the warmth of the balanced and fair coverage the INQ gives Sony.

You know, when I was younger people used to ask me if I wanted any tea with my milk.

My question for The INQ, based on this and other stories (not only those about Sony) is this : Do you want news with your bias? 

It's all fine and well to have a style and policy of applying particularly sarcastic and skeptical spin to virtually every story you report. But this last year or two the level of spin in the stories here has grown and grown. We have CharlieD doing hatchet jobs on Nvidia whenever the opportunity presents itself. Sadly they present themselves often, but sometimes Charlie seems to step past the mark and skewer them for shots and giggles.

Nick has a tendency to slam Sony simply for existing, never mind delivering decent products. Actually that seems to be a common theme at the INQ these days. 

What's distinctly odd is that I hadn't heard or read this supposed rumor about the PSP's demise anywhere else. In fact I have seen reports showing the PSP regularly selling very well, and being a positive for Sony in their game console business. Curious that the dark and satanic rumor mill churns out this rumor and it get's reported here. Is this a case of the INQ staff being bored and wanting to make up the news now?

What's next? Rumors that Zune is getting games? I'd love to see how it's button configuration can work for games. No doubt Microsoft will have some ergonomics lab declare it a natural fit for the human hand in the same week as announcing games. Wonder how the INQ would cover that?
mine gets used more as a GPS tool here in the U.S.A. (thanx MapThis!) and emulator, movie player more then i play psp games. in fact the only psp game ive even really atemted to play is crisis core, and its slow going for me.
GPS is out in the UK.

http://www.dixons.co.uk/martprd/store/dix_page.jsp?BV_SessionID=@@@@2102086904.1214487950@@@@&BV_EngineID=ccdcadeehhjfekecflgceggdhhmdgmk.0&page=Product&fm=null&sm=null&tm=null&sku=456405&category_oid=-28607

They only launched with a few (dixons/currys) retailers and haven't advertised the fact it is available. This seems a pretty abysmal way to launch a product, but I doubt Sony will take any notice.
Sony needs to give the rest of the world stuff like the gps and camera and their cool docking bay and the other colors and all the stuff they reserve for Japan and haven't spread to the rest of the world yet. I've been waiting for over a year to use the PSP as a GPS. Why is it so hard to bring these items to the rest of the world and quit focusing Japan so much.
Why is it that products have to be a high growth megaproduct or these mega corporations want to drop it already after they have a huge base built on the platform? Just because it is not making the greedy shareholders mega bucks and instead is giving a steady stream even if small they want to can it for bigger and so called better crap.
Loyalty base be screwed and they don't care.
My girlfriend bought me one as a Christmas present. It seems to be a capable piece of hardware and Sony seem to be trying to extend it's usefulness with the addition of skype, btmessenger, goexplore etc. However these attempts are lack lustre. I can't find a psp skype headset in any of the game shops in ireland and again it's difficult enough to find it online. Go Explore! was announced in January it still has not been released in Ireland and I assume ditto for the UK. With regards to the playstation network store, the free and paid for content changes very little from month to month. It seems like there are a handful of people looking after the product - I assume it's better supported in the land of the rising sun.