Sony announces PSP's battery life...

[A Black Falcon]

Except that the N64 and the Gamecube weren't compatible with past systems, while the GBA and if Nintendo is smart the GBA's succesor. That's a VERY big plus for Nintendo's handhelds-backwards compatiblity.

Yeah, they really must find a way to make it backwards-compatible. That'd be just such an incredibly huge boost to the thing... leaving it out WOULD be asking for Sony to take over, I think.

Sega stopped being popular at the end of the Genesis' lifespan. Sony is now the most popular video game maker in the world, unfortunately.

I never said it was a perfect comparison.

You can buy spare battery packs for the SP at Nintendo's official site.

Sure, but its a pain to replace them...

Rechargeability doesn't change anything... oh boy. Let's see now... why did the Gamegear fail? Hmm... could it be that you had to pay a fortune for batteries in a short amount of time? ....BINGO! Now how to fix that... hmm....

I got it! What if they made it so that instead of paying lots of money for batteries every three hours, you can recharge the battery for free! WOW, would that be awesome or what!!



Really now, I was using the recharger base of a PDA for an example. It makes it very conveniant to recharge the system since that's where you'd put the handheld when you're not using it. And for those people that like to play games for seven hours in a row, they could get a spare battery pack. Simple, no?

No. Its far more complex than using a console with a longer battery life. More complex, more things to remember, more possibilities of doing something wrong (forget to charge something? Wait several hours...), more pricey... its just a much bigger pain! And even with two battery packs it still won't last as long as a GBA... its just not that simple and it IS a very significant difference. I just don't see how you can keep denying that.

Okay, let's analyze this, shall we?

Did I say the GBA would "keel over and die quickly"? Nope! Did I say that the PSP will "run over the market and in a matter of months completely take it over"? Nope, I didn't even hint at that! You completely pulled that out of your ass, as per usual.

And we still don't know how expensive the PSP will be, so calling it an expensive handheld before we even know the price is extremely stupid of you, even by your standards.

You sure seem to have been implying that... because the next GB probably won't be too far behind, so for the PSP to take over the industry before the GB has a chance to catch up with equal hardware it'll have to sell amazingly well and crush the GBA in months... which of course is impossible given the PSP's limitations.



What will limit the PSP from beating the GBA? 1) Price. Think of the market for handheld games! It is noticably younger than the main console market... sure, Sony well might be counting on older gamers going and buying the thing... but I wouldn't be so sure. Older gamers don't seem to be as interested on the whole in portable gaming... that is a MAJOR hurdle for a console aimed straight at older gamers. Because, think about it, the PSP is in so many ways way, way far away from what the younger marke would want. Its very expensive, first... that is a major problem for a big part of the handheld market. It also needs to be recharged (something easy to forget), you have to switch other batteries, etc... all that stuff will hurt with that market!

Sony is clearly betting that the now small older portable gaming console market (as opposed to cellphone/PDA games) will grow dramatically with this system. I am just not so sure that that's a given...