Quote:PlayStation Portable's tough birth
Published: December 10, 2004, 9:59 AM PST
By David Becker
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
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Sony's PlayStation Portable may ultimately live up to company promises of a "Walkman for the 21st century" that revolutionizes entertainment, but that's not going to happen next week.

The electronics giant is set to begin selling the handheld game machine in Japan on Sunday. But the PSP will arrive with a meager selection of games, none of the planned multimedia functions, a history of delays and questions about technical issues such as battery life.

Issues such as those add to Sony's challenges as it not only enters the handheld gaming market long dominated by Nintendo, but tries to define a new class of portable entertainment gadget.

"This is a really ambitious thing they're doing, talking about a combination device that's going to have competition from a number of directions," said Brian O'Rourke, an analyst for research company In-Stat/MDR. "It's going to be a real challenge for Sony to educate the market about what this can do."

Sony revealed plans for the PSP last year, positioning it as potential breakthrough machine that would do for digital media what the Walkman did for analog music.

But the PSP has been a difficult pregnancy, with Sony dogged by development and production issues that look likely to push back the device's North American introduction to late March and limit the Japan launch to 200,000 units.

Game publishers have also pushed back PSP titles, and the console will launch in Japan with only five available games. A Sony Computer Entertainment America spokesman said there are dozens more titles in development, however, and the company "is dedicated to continuing the PlayStation tradition of providing our consumers with the vast library of first- and third-party titles they have grown accustomed to."

A slim opening lineup of games shouldn't be a problem, O'Rourke said, as early adopters will snap up whatever PSP units are available the first few months.
Tackling the tech challenges
"The publicity of having a new product will carry them for a while," he said. "Then they really have to deliver the software."

While the PSP game roster is sure to grow--with dozens of titles in the works by Sony and third-party publishers--promised music and video support is less clear. As of yet, no music or movie studios, including the major ones owned by Sony, have announced plans to release content on the new Universal Media Disc (UMD) optical media format the PSP will use.

The Sony representative said "entertainment software of an entirely new category mixing game, music and video on a single UMD" disc, will be available next spring.

Schelley Olhava, an analyst for research company IDC, said that as long as the PSP has a solid game roster within a reasonable time, Sony can take its time exploiting multimedia capabilities.

"It's going to be like the PlayStation 2: People will buy it because it has games they want to play," Olhava said. "If other stuff happens, they've got time to phase it in."

The PSP will also have to solve some technical challenges, most notably concerns about battery life. Sony estimates that a fully charged PSP battery will be good for four to six hours of game playing.

But Sony Computer Entertainment President Ken Kutaragi acknowledged in a Japanese press interview last month that those estimates were for playing a simple puzzle or card game with the screen dimmed, speakers turned off and wireless connectivity disabled. Turn on all the bells and whistles and load up a graphically complex racing game, and the battery will drain faster. Nintendo's market-leading Game Boy Advance SP, by contrast, runs for more than 10 hours between charges.

The Sony representative said the company was confident the PSP's battery would be sufficient for most owners, but spare battery packs will be available.

Quote:especially when you remember that the GBA will be the #1 handheld for a long time to come.

Quote:well to me they are still mentally offensive "Go on, touch me, it's okay." things, but for some reason I think it'll actually get people buying them...

Quote:As one of the more technically impressive PSP games, Ridge Racers has been the subject of much speculation regarding the system's battery life. While the battery has been rated for six hours of gameplay, that number seems to drop a bit when playing a game like Ridge Racers, which chews through battery life more quickly. Though battery life is something that can be difficult to gauge, it seems like Ridge Racers could chop that six hour number in half, if not more. Ridge Racers also has some noticeable load times that occur upon booting the game, and upon entering or exiting a race. While you'll notice the load times, they don't seem excruciatingly long, either.

Quote:Graphically, Ridge Racers seems to fall somewhere between the R4 and Ridge Racer 5. It looks better than a PlayStation game, but in some spots, it doesn't look quite as good as a PlayStation 2 game. The textures used for the track environments are sharp, and the polygonal environments are very, very crisp. But the cars themselves wear slightly blurry textures. However, they do have a nice level of reflection on them, which makes the cars look great, overall. On top of all that, the game runs at a clean, smooth frame rate that handles the sense of speed really well. This is a nice, fast-moving game.

Quote:Q: How long does the PSP's battery last?

A: The short answer is that it depends on what you're doing. The longer answer is that Sony has stated that the battery should last around six hours. With simpler-looking games like Lumines or Mahjong Fight Club, that definitely seems to be the case. But with more graphically intensive games, like Ridge Racers, the battery doesn't last quite as long. Based on our estimates and a few battery-draining tests, Ridge Racers seems to last somewhere between 90 minutes and three hours. Playing with the wireless networking switch flipped on will also further reduce your battery life. The system has an auto-sleep function that stops the wireless drain, but that switch is there for a reason. Turn it off when you're not using it.

Video and audio will likely drain the battery differently, depending on where the content is coming from. It's less power-intensive to read from the memory stick slot than the UMD drive, though without any audio discs and only one demo video disc full of short game and movie trailers available now, it's difficult to actually put a number on this. Considering that the screen will black out if left unattended, it seems reasonable that you should get a good amount of battery power out of the system when listening to audio.

Quote:Q: Are there long loading times in every game?

A: After years of cartridge-based handhelds, it's a little difficult to accept the concept of loading times on a portable game system. Yes, PSP games need to load, just like any other disc-based system would. Those load times vary. Lumines loads up new graphics and music when you change stages, and during this load, all of the game's audio--all of which is tied to the music--stops. Ridge Racers loads for about 15 seconds up front, and from there, getting into or out of a race takes another 10-15 seconds. Vampire Chronicle seems to be the worst offender so far, as it has 15-20 second load times when you get into or out of a match. In the game's tower mode, where you only fight for one round, this becomes pretty noticeable. But for the most part, the loading times aren't that noticeable. When you put a number on them, it sounds worse than it actually is. Ridge Racers doesn't feel like it takes forever to load. Vampire Chronicle can be a little frustrating, but that's about it.

Quote:Q: What's the deal with the PSP's control disc? Is it analog or not?

A: We've heard reports from the development side of things that the control disc on the PSP isn't a "true" analog device. After playing a few games that use it, it's difficult to tell the difference. The disc definitely allows for more than eight directions of motion, and works fine for, say, making slight turns in Ridge Racers. That said, the disc seems to have a fairly large dead zone, and it's difficult to get very slight movements out of it. But above all, it seems to work well for driving games, at least, and shouldn't be a problem, regardless of how, exactly, it works under the hood.

Quote:Ridge Racers seems to last somewhere between 90 minutes and three hours. Playing with the wireless networking switch flipped on will also further reduce your battery life.

Quote:The PSP requires a lot of power no matter how you look at it.

Quote:You still underestimate how different the portable market really is, OB1, and I'm sure you will continue to even after the PSP fails to totally obliterate Nintendo like you so badly wish it to...

Quote:but somewhere inside I know you know that you were wrong about battery life. That's why you've got to retreat on it and say that it doesn't matter.

Quote:Wow, not even I was that moronic when I was a biased fanboy. So I want the PSP to "totally obliterate Nintendo" because I'm not an idiot fanboy like you are and can look at things more objectively and without bias? Haha, how wonderful it must be to be able to skew every truth in this world to fit your twisted perspective.

Quote:You said many, many times that it wouldn't be just a couple of hours, and then shoved it in all of our faces when the "4-6" designation came out, saying "see I told you so!"... but now that we know that for most games it'll be more like 2-4, if I want to be nice, you say that you never said it'd be horrible? Um... yeaaaah... we believe you...

Quote:You are probably the most biased person here...

Quote:you don't understand the situation.

Quote:You are biased towards yourself... or rather you think your opinions once stated are permanantly right... this is a great case of that. But we'll see what happens.

Quote:And I'm not talking about every argument, I'm talking about this specific one. Here you are defending Sony stronger than even some developers are... it's pretty aburd how many excuses you have for their failings... yes, because of its power and the Sony Marketing Division it'll sell well, but I am very far from convinced that it'll be the force that beats Nintendo in handhelds. Even if we restrict it to just DS vs PSP (a significant restriction because the GBA will be #1 for quite some time) I really don't know which way it'll go... I'd like to think Nintendo can definitely win though.

Quote:I understand it well enough, the guys at Gamestop tested RR and they concluded that the battery life was terrible, clocking in at less the 3 hours and as low as 90 minutes and on top of that if you want to play over the internet or wireless LAN you're going to get an EVEN LOWER battery life. Now, you can talk about Namco not trying hard enough or whatever, but what this comes down to is if you want to play the PSP to it's full potential [i.e. games with amazing graphics, sound, a.i., and wireless multiplayer] you're going to have to put up with a low battery life, there's just no way around that.

Quote:All units have been using Namco’s delicious Ridge Racers with speaker sound, and gamers have reported an average of 2 hours and 40 minutes game time. Using headphones, the duration crept up to a shade over three hours and ten minutes.

Quote:Yeah, Ridge Racers lasted us just under three hours.

Then we charged the battery to full. It was totally NOT full out of the box. Then we played a combination of Minna no Golf (about four hours) and Ridge Racers (two hours) for the combined total of six hours and three minutes.

Also -- the charger cord is pretty long. The headphone jack is nice. You can use a remote and Pro Eggos on the short cord. Then . . . well. You really won't mind playing it at home, Aderack. I mean, granted some excellent games come out for it. The screen is just so high resolution and pretty. Everything moves well. When you're lying in bed and playing Armored Core with headphones on late at night -- well. It's a nice experience. A nicer experience than I've ever had with a portable system.

I mean, I couldn't have the same experience with any of the Gameboys, being that I tend to like to lie in bed in complete darkness.

Quote:So we've at last played our way through a full battery charge cycle. In case you don't feel like counting, the battery died after about four hours and fourty-five minutes of five different games and one hour of MP3 play. We didn't use the WiFi features of the system at all during this time.

Keep in mind that we avoided charging the system a number of times that we could've easily plugged it in (in particular, as we slept). Unless we plan on playing games for more than five hours in a row, the battery seems like it'll be okay to us. Of course, for long trips, we may find ourselves picking up a spare just in case (they're about $40 at retail).

Quote:HA! I love it when you project. In case you forgot, when it was announced that the PSP was going to be around $200, and I WAS proven right and you were proven VERY wrong, you refused to admit that! Did you forget that already?? EVERYONE could see that you were wrong, as the facts were right in front of our faces. PSP = $200 = I was right = you're a dumb fuck. Even then you WOULD NOT admit that you were wrong. It's amazing how hypocritical one idiot can be. It really is.

Quote:I have to be the objective voice of reason in this forum since everybody here seems be a certain degree of blind fanboy. I'm looking at this objectively, and only a biased fanboy would ever say anything different. I know that, because I used to be like that. Several years ago I realized how stupid it is to have gaming biases and take sides for no reason (actually, your reason is much like mine used to be, which is that you only own nintendo consoles so you HAVE to hate the competition), so I stopped being a stupid Nintendo fanboy.

Quote:One thing that seems clear is that factors like sound and brightness (and wi-fi) greatly affect battery life. Turn the brightness way down and turn off the sound (or for slightly less impact use headphones) and you probably will be getting 4-6 hours with Ridge Racers. But full brightness and the speakers?

Quote:What is actually amazing is how annoyed you are by something as trivial as which words I used...

Quote:The worst fanboys are the ones who think they aren't biased...

Quote:Actually I've read several reports that you'll get five hours with full screen brightness and volume at max, if the system is fully recharged.