http://www2u.biglobe.ne.jp/~nanko/live/WS000030.jpg
http://www2u.biglobe.ne.jp/~nanko/live/WS000033.jpg
http://www2u.biglobe.ne.jp/~nanko/live/WS000035.jpg
http://www2u.biglobe.ne.jp/~nanko/live/WS000036.jpg
http://www.trenzhost.com/files/Culex/PSP.JPG
Looks a little bigger than the original GBA model, very sleek and sexy, as you’d expect from Sony. Lovely! Don’t mind me, I’m a portable phreak and just have to get the first word in. :P
Ah! There it is! Never mind!
-Kitsune
Ya know, I’ve read a few things where people are expecting this to “crush” the GBA…
I just don’t see it. The GBA is cheap as hell, has lots of great games with SuperNES era graphics, and is one hell of a nice piece of hardware.
I can’t see them managing to beat Nintendo at this game they’ve got down so well.
The other argument I’ve seen is production costs. Except for the ridiculously closed GBA publication market, I could hire an artist, contract a musician and crank out a very good GBA game in 6-12 months by myself. From what I hear the PSP is a lot higher effort than that.
I guess we’ll have to see how it looks.
Yah, I’ve had those concerns too. I definitely don’t see Sony crushing Nintendo, they’ll have to work to remain competitive. As I said in the other 3D, DS or PSP, 3D games have a whole host of difficulties on portables that I don’t see either overcoming any time soon, but we’ll see how it works out. Sony did say that they were lowering license fees for the platform and the UMD media is supposed to be really cheap, so maybe that will help with production costs.
Though I don’t really care who owns it, Nintendo’s shown they know portable design and gaming really well for over 15 years, and Sony’s always got their stuff together. Hopefully 2D gaming will live on somehow. :cry:
In other news, it does have the rumored increase in RAM up to 32MB and 4MB VRAM. I haven’t heard whether its of the same rechargeable sort of battery as the SP though, I would imagine so.
It was very nice though when the GBA always played so differently from the major consoles, and if I could chose one route, right now, I’d still want the GBA to dominate. I really don’t give a shit whether some hot shot sploogy developer who wacks off to polygon counts think its too underpowered to make good games, anyone who has an ounce of talent and creativity knows the real deal.
Ah well, it has Ape Escape (over here Saru Getchu!), so that means I have to get it one day (though one wonders how it plays without two analog sticks)! ;) Looks like Ridge Racer, a Tales of game, Dynasty Warriors and MGS also showed up on the system game roll. Yikes!
No announced pricing? I hope that doesn’t mean we should assume the worst, but we’ll see.
Meh, I’m too tired, I already saw what the DS looked like, so I’ll catch the rest in the morning.
-Kitsune
Well, how “portable” will the PSP actually be? It’s still optical-disc based, so won’t it be prone to skipping issues due to moderately jarring handling? At least with the GBA incarnations, the cart is immune to that type of problem.
Minidiscs were immune to that problem too. And these are sort of evolved minidiscs.
I’ll wait for a price, shelf date and titles before I get excited.
Gamespot also has some high-quality pics of the unit up
It looks very nice. Good design, but I guess you need a carrying case to protect the screen?
And check out the screen real estate. Nice. I agree that this isn’t going to “kick Nintendo’s butt.” That seems incredibly unlikely, especially given Nintendo’s momentum in this market and the relative price points of the two systems. I think it will make a nice counterpart to the Gameboy, though.
Anyone see the in-game footage at the Sony press conference? It was amazing, but… none of the actual games are doing it for me. Sorry.
Wow, that’s awfully short. I mean, it isn’t very portable if you have to plug it in all the time.
Supposedly it’s 10 hours for games, 8 hours for music and 2.5 hours for movies. That probably means they’re counting on the games not spinning the disc the entire time they’re being played.
You’re going to be charging this thing daily.
The screen will suffer from the same problems as the original GBA and earlier Game Boy units. Since it’ll probably cost $250 at least, you’ll want a case for it anyway I imagine.
The screen is big. That’s cool. But in the end, the games are going to be the same old handheld versions of things you could play on a console. At least Nintendo DS will offer something new.
–Dave
It’s just like you, Dave Long, to be a grumpy gamer and naysay everything! Sheesh, way to go, guy!
I’m sure the PSP will sell well and it’ll have some great games. That’s obvious. Too much money being spent on it for that not to happen. I like the big screen. That’s neat.
My reaction is far different from the folks in the other threads. They’re just waiting for the chance to tell us how stupid Nintendo is. Meanwhile, like I said, just about all sentiment elsewhere is universally positive. This is the only place on the net where I see this level of negativity about Nintendo DS and Zelda.
And guess what? That’s what happens every single time something new is announced by Nintendo! It’s like clockwork!
–Dave
Well, there is admittedly a bit of an anti-Nintendo bias here but it’s far from universal and I’d reckon that your chivalrous defense of all things Nintendo acts as a counterbalance. ;)
I’m reserving judgment on the DS and the PSP until I see them hands-on. I’ve never been a fan of any portable system. I pick up a GBA SP and my first thought is, How do people play games with such a tiny screen? The actual games are critical but with a portable, price and form factor play big roles, too.
It will be interesting to see how the PSP fares. It’s hard to imagine any portable making much of a dent in Nintendo’s dominance of the market with the GBA.
They’re making a Darkstalkers game for it, and that’s fine.
At least Nintendo DS will offer something new.
Isn’t this the guy who bitched about the Xbox having “PC components” in it, like a hard drive and ethernet connectivity? If anything, the “innovations” in your hated Xbox have done more to further console gaming than the DS, which rips off Pocket PC tech inasmuch as the Xbox ripped off PC tech, will for handheld gaming.
The DS looks really silly – as I suspected, it’s purely innovation for innovation’s sake. Sure, the Nintendo designed content will be good, but the fact that the content is good is entirely independent of their silly dual screens and touch/stylus interface. It’s a goofy piece of kit that serves as an apt visual metaphor for Nintendo itself: completely awkward in the marketplace and fumbling for a sense of direction. (Although the “mature Zelda” on the Gamecube looks’ supremely rockin’, and it doesn’t look to have any bloody sailing in it.)
As for the battery life, the GBA SP is also 10 hours for games with the backlight on – a backlight nobody with normal vision actually turns off. Also, is it true that the DS is not backlit?
10 hours for games sounds perfectly acceptable for the PSP, if that turns out to be how it really holds up in practical use. Even 2.5 hours for movies is understandable–hell, my laptop just barely gets that running DVDs, and I keep two batteries in it. That 2.5 hour figure had me worried at first–if that was for games, then that would have been pretty lame.
meh.
My pocketpc can do 2 movies before the battery gets lame, AND I only have to buy the movie once - it is dead easy to convert dvds.
I’m not buying ‘tiny dvds’ of movies I already own.
That said, I’ll be buying it for games eventually, I’m sure. Sony can get good games made for this thing, I have no doubt of that.