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+--- Thread: PSP Go / PS3 Slim (/showthread.php?tid=5273)
PSP Go / PS3 Slim - A Black Falcon - 31st May 2009
PSP Go: What kind of an idiot designs a new model of a system (and it seems to be just that, no hints of better specs, no second analog, no sign of a touchscreen... it's just a new PSP in a stupider looking slide-down case)... and removes all compatibility with virtually every game that had been released for the system previously (as the Go has no UMD drive)? It's hard for me to imagine why they'd be so dumb...
I mean, yes, digital download (DD) is coming along and improving, even in console world now. But it's nowhere near dominating mainstream. Most people buy console games in stores, not online. Going online-sales only really is a big gamble here... and with just 16GB of internal memory, it can't hold all that many full-sized games before it's full (and at wireless speeds, that'll take a while to download!). NO sales in stores? No better specs or touchscreen or something to entice current owners? Lame slide-down design, with the screen still on top so it can still get easily scratched? This just makes no sense...
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=363406
Quote:
![[Image: 25ovwjo.jpg]](http://i40.tinypic.com/25ovwjo.jpg)
That's blown up. It's actually smaller than a DSi, and the screen is a half inch smaller than the original PSP. This better be cheaper, even with 16GB of internal flash...
Now, I know -- the DSi's exclusive software is so far all download-only. But the system plays almost all DS games (only not supporting ones which require something to be in the GBA slot, like Guitar Hero and a few others), and they could release card-based DSi games in the future if they so desired, as well as dual-mode titles, GBC style. Sony both didn't actually upgrade the specs, it seems, AND got rid of the disc drive. Um... I knew this thing was hurt a lot by piracy, but that's really not the right solution...
Hopefully normal PSPs will be able to download these games too, though, with a memory stick. With a normal DS you can't get DSi games, unfortunately, whether or not they use the new power...
As for the PS3 Slim, it's just a smaller PS3. Joy. I'm sure it still won't have any PS2 BC... or a competitive price, even if the '$50 price drop' rumor is true...
PSP Go / PS3 Slim - Dark Jaguar - 31st May 2009
Yeah the slide design never sat well with me. Yes it's a space saver, and that's always good, but a folding design has the massive advantage of screen protection. The slide design isn't really more durable (and if what I've been hearing is accurate, it may be less durable) so the only real reason to go with it would be "look at this sliding action" sort of thing.
They removed the UMD drive it seems as it was deemed a failure. Loading directly from memory is faster and will allow the system to have a lot longer battery life. I agree that removing the drive completely removes compatibility though, and since the only real update is more internal memory which can now be used to store media and not just the firmware, I don't see myself bothering with this remodel.
It won't do anything to prevent piracy. The moment the firmware on this thing is hacked, people will be uploading the store games left and right and will be able to play them just fine without any keys needed. Sad really, considering that in the case of a downloaded purchase there's no legitimate excuse. The only real excuse would be someone buying this model who decides to rip their old UMD based games and transfer them for play into this system's memory.
16GB is a good starting amount though. The UMDs max out at 1.2 GB, and the majority of games I have don't even use that, many in the 500MB range. That's a good number of games there. Plus, Sony's got the new 16GB memory sticks out which are about $80 for their's and the 3rd party liscensed ones are about $50. Once the 32GB sticks come out (the max that the design can support before new connectors need to be designed) that'll be plenty of memory for PSP use. I still routinely convert my PS1 games to PSP executables so there's another source of space use, but even a 4 disk game will only use about 2 gigs of space.
Sony has been hinting at getting rid of the UMD for some time, and this seems to be their move. It doesn't surprise me really. The only annoying thing is it may mean they ditch selling the UMD format of the games entirely, forcing my hand in upgrading my memory stick.
PSP Go / PS3 Slim - A Black Falcon - 2nd June 2009
PSP Go is $250, despite having no hardware improvements, a smaller screen, and no UMD drive? What? 16GB of flash memory isn't worth that much...
Plus, no PS3 price drop announcement, yet at least. Do they really want to do better? MAG and GOW3 won't do it, fun as they look...
PSP Go / PS3 Slim - Dark Jaguar - 4th June 2009
The PSP Go also seems to use the same old two button style of volume changing. I hate that. It takes too long when you find it suddenly too loud to change the volume. Nintendo's lovely slide bar (as opposed to the old dial wheel) is the absolute best volume changing solution I've ever seen. It's analog, but volume changing never needed to be digital. You want it at max or min? They're there in an instant, and in fact even faster than the old dial wheel. As a side note that's yet another thing I don't like about the micro's design, it uses the digital two button system too.
PSP Go / PS3 Slim - Dark Jaguar - 5th June 2009
http://kotaku.com/5279557/sony-is-working-on-a-umd-solution-for-psp-go
Sony has apparently been thinking about the issue of people who already have UMD games and has an idea in mind, though I must admit it's not the best one.
Essentially, they'd require you to give them your UMD version and they'd grant you a liscene to download a copy to your PSP. Hmm... I'm not really digging that idea myself. Firstly, I actually own my copies of my console games (and my older PC games back before I had to agree to intentionally obfuscating documents to install them). Right now, I OWN Crisis Core. I don't own a liscense to their game, I own the game. I don't own the copyrights of course, but I do own the copy and can do whatever I want with it. It's hard to convince me to give that up.
Further, I can already rip all my UMD versions onto my memory card, an 8 GB card at the moment (you can get 8 gig cards for $15-$20 now if you know where to shop), which is plenty for the purposes of putting a couple games at a time on there, and is certainly a quicker process than downloading plus no need for internet access when I do it. Granted, this is unofficial tools, but that's part of the problem. I can do something better than what they are offering using free tools someone else put together online. In fact, I need to go through the trouble of hacking my firmware on my PSP to do this, and right now the newest PSP models have yet to be hacked so that won't be an option for new buyers.
As I see it, here's what Sony should do. They should put in official ripping software right in the next firmware update. It would only take up a few kilobytes (I know this because the tool that does this on my PSP takes up that amount and does a lot more on top of that, further their tool would make use of all the existing ipls they already made for reading from the drive instead of having to write new routines from scratch). Now the obvious issue is preventing piracy. However, there's a very simple solution and it's pretty much the same one they are already using for Playstation Store downloads. Lock that ripped game to the PSP in question using the MAC address and a special key file generated for it that only works there. If that keyfile is missing or doesn't match that PSP, the ripped game won't play, simple as that. Now, this does mean that among small circles of friends there are still going to be people ripping friend's games and saving those copies, but while a problem it's a pretty insignificant one and certainly a lot better than just saying "give us your permanent copy and we'll give you a sketchy version". For that matter, some of my friends own a LOT of UMDs, a lot more than will fit in 32GB of space. If they trade in all those games, it means deleting and redownloading as opposed to just popping in a game. When they get a Go, all those ripped games can be permanently transfered to the new system, liscense and all, in the same way when I upgraded to the XBox 360, all my digital content I bought on the original XBox could be transfered easily when I set up my new account.
Don't get me wrong, I much prefer having my games on my memory card. It's just much easier to rip it to the card each time than having to download every time. As of now, my UMD drive is used mainly just for ripping games and storing "just one more" that I couldn't fit on the card when I go on long trips. Sony really just needs to bite the bullet here and accept what the homebrew community has to offer. I don't mind their need to protect their copyrights, but there are better ways to do it. Oh, I should add that the ripped ISOs look identical to when you hover over them. They don't look like odd iconless nameless executables in the interface, they look like they are supposed to be there and are indistinguishable from hovering over the disk icon in the interface (except you find them in the Games folder with the downloaded games instead of the Disk icon). Oh, there's the issue of people with ONLY a PSP Go, but I figure they aren't going to have any UMDs anyway.
As a side note, this applies to PS1 games as well. Right now, I use a combination of programs to convert all sorts of games into games that run in Sony's official emulator software on the PSP. It works great, and my own versions look a lot nicer than their's because instead of using that generic recycled PS1 background art and barely anything else for when you run it, I deck it out with music from the game and special artwork and if it fits in the 500KB limit, a little movie sample. If something's worth doing, it's worth doing to an unhealthy level of inhuman perfection. Check popsdb.com for a huge list of what I'm talking about. Anyway, my point is I've had FF7 sitting on my PSP for over a year now, way ahead of their "stunning announcement" of it being sold on their online store, because, well, I own the PS1 original and just ripped the disks and stuck them in there. I also play the game on the PS3, but since my PS3 isn't hacked or anything (nor have I even bothered checking if it can be hacked, oh, I have a PS3 now, not sure I mentioned that, I got the very last "original model" version a store had some time ago so mine plays PS2 games just fine, they never should have removed that capability) I can't play the ripped files, so I just use the disks. That's just fine on my home version, since the PS3 is next to my CD rack anyway, though it'd be nice to have easier access I suppose.
This rambling was meant to get to a point about them enabling ripping of old PS1 games. Again, they can lock the ripped game to the system it was ripped to (and the PSP that's assigned to that PS3), and just allow people to rip as needed. Let users fill in all the info like name, pictures and disk number on their own and they won't even need to make a database for it (there's already plenty available for just that purpose online anyway). Again, locking the copies would allow only a very limited scope for abuse, among friends that have physical contact with each other, and more to the point, people are already doing this. By opening their gates they give people less reason to WANT to hack their firmware. I myself would not bother with this slow to update stuff if I could do what I wanted with my PSP out of the box. I currently have Brave Fencer Musashi (well, I'll likely delete that, the current emulation software doesn't cooperate with this game yet, plus I think my disk needs resurfacing as I had a lot of trouble ripping that one, those two issues may be related), Chrono Cross, Xenogears, Final Fantasy 7 & 8, Legend of Legaia, and Vagrant Story stuffed on my PSP. Not a one of those games is even IN their online store yet, save FF7 that just got put up a few days ago. Most of those work flawlessly. Heck, better than that, using Sony's little memory card adapter tool for the PS3 and their built in virtual memory card thing, I just copied over all my old save files straight into my PSP and that works perfectly too. Well, as perfectly as they can run without the use of analog sticks (the stick on the PSP is used as L2 and R2 (and up is both at once)). Sony could sell more systems if they allowed people to do this. Plenty of people still have a big collection of old PS1 games they'd love to play portably but can't justify buying the exact game twice on the online store. It's not much different than Apple selling the iPod as not JUST something to play only the songs you buy off their store, but giving the users the software to rip that music off their old CDs and stick it on their iPod. They're missing a selling point with this closed system of their's.
PSP Go / PS3 Slim - A Black Falcon - 6th June 2009
http://www.engadget.com/2009/06/05/video-white-psp-go-hands-on/
Five to six hours battery life, about the same as the PSP 3000 model. Um, shouldn't getting rid of the disc drive improve battery life? What are they doing with it, reducing the size of the battery so as to make sure this thing really has no advantages over a standard PSP with decent memory stick?
PSP Go / PS3 Slim - Dark Jaguar - 6th June 2009
Not using the disk drive improves battery life in my PSP, so that's a good question (mine's a 2000 model, I got it exchanged way back when using clever timing with warrentees and shelf stocking, and honestly after looking at what the 3000 offers I don't have much motivation to get that model either). I can only assume that when they shrunk down the thickness of it (considerably in the case of the battery considering it has to fit in half that thickness since it slides apart), they had to shrink down the battery which would of course directly reduce the charge it could hold.
There's a possibility of a special higher capacity battery pack released for it, if one is willing to accept a bump in the case due to the battery needing to be larger as a result. That's the case with the 2000/3000 anyway.
I can only say that battery life is now not a possible selling point. Whatever gains they get from loading directly from a memory stick instead of a UMD drive appear to have been cancelled out somehow, so it's basically identical in that respect.
PSP Go / PS3 Slim - A Black Falcon - 6th June 2009
Oh, and evidently 16GB of flash memory probably costs less than a UMD drive assembly. That $80 looks like pretty much just pure profit... or pure stupid, perhaps. :)
PSP Go / PS3 Slim - Dark Jaguar - 7th June 2009
Probably covering the R&D or something, but it's still not the best move.
PSP Go / PS3 Slim - A Black Falcon - 7th June 2009
Yeah, I have to wonder if they'll drop the price even before it comes out, with all the negative press it's gotten, and the needlessness of the price... maybe not, if they really want it to fail, but still... it's a weird decision, and almost certainly not a good one for anyone other than people who like seeing Sony fail.
(... Yes, it is nice to see them do that, isn't it? :))