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Posts tagged UMD
Global Geek News Podcast #44
Nov 10th
Here are the shownotes for episode #44 for the Global Geek News Podcast.
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Stories:
- nVidia denies x86 chip rumors, pushes Fermi back to 2010
- Got friends? Now you can thank Facebook
- Myspace traffic drop costs News Corp. $100 million
- Sony’s PSPgo sells 28,000 units in Japan on launch day, physical media points and laughs
- Inventor of cell phones say they have become too complicated
- Apple’s hypocrisy continues, approves Mein Kampf for the App Store
- Why you should think twice before dating an iPhone user
- Comcast’s new throttling plan uses triggers to throttle bandwidth
- Secret anti-piracy treaty turns ISPs into cops or pirates
- Anti-piracy group throws in the towel, pirates walk free
Tip of the week: 100 Open Technology Courses
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Host: Jeremy Bray & Wesley Faulkner
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Sony sets the PSP Go up for failure
Sep 28th
Greetings Readers!
As many of you know, I am a longtime fan of Sony’s PSP and I was initially looking forward to its sequel which turned out to be the PSP Go, but unfortunately it appears that Sony has set the portable gaming device up for failure. There are three primary ways that Sony is setting the PSP Go up for failure which are the focus of this post.
First, the biggest problem facing the PSP Go is the price. Considering the PSP Go plays the same content as the original PSP, there is no reason that Sony should be selling it at $250 when the original PSP which will continue to be sold, sells for under $170. While the original PSP was $250 when it shipped, those were very different economic times than what we are in now and the general rule I go by is that if a portable gaming device is more expensive than the most popular gaming console, it is overpriced. While it is great not having to deal with UMD disks that are constantly breaking, I don’t think that justifies the cost when you realize that the screen is also smaller and and despite your expectations that the battery life would be better since there is no disk drive, they are actually about the same as the normal PSP. Oh, and the battery is not removable which is another strike against the Go.
Of course the price point of the system is only one big factor in the overall price of the device. The fact that you will need all new accessories is going to be another major expense tied to the device. If that wasn’t bad enough, it looks like the games will cost more to download than they do in UMD format for the original PSP. Are you kidding me? I am going to have to pay more for downloadable games than for games with considerable production costs? I should be saving money because I am not in need of boxes, instructions, disks and whatever else, not spending more to get less! I am tired of paying more and getting less. Speaking of paying more and getting less…
Did you think I was finished talking about how much more you are going to have to pay to own the PSP Go? If you thought so, you would be wrong. In the ultimate slap in the face to everybody who already has the original PSP, the UMD conversion plan that Sony had once announced has been cancled for “legal and technical reasons.” PSP owners, myself included, had thought that the price to migrate would be fairly cheap since we could convert all of our PSP game collection to digital versions for the PSP Go. Instead, the greedy fools at Sony now expect us to pay for our games all over again. I guess they figured that if people bought all of their music again when they migrated from cassette to CD that we would be willing to do it when we “upgraded” from a PSP to a PSP Go. They would be wrong in that assumption.
I had a lot of hope for the PSP Go when it first was announced but I think that hope is pretty much gone. With the launch of the PSP Go later this week (Oct. 1st), Sony has set the system up to fail miserably. It certainly isn’t any competition for the lower priced DSi or even the iPhone. I had planned on getting the PSP Go on launch day just as I did with the PSP, but considering the overall cost of the device, games and accessories, I now have no plans on purchasing the device. If you can’t sell you system to somebody like me that collects game systems regardless of whether I play them or not, you have real problems. Get ready for all of the PSP Go is a complete flop stories.
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Is the PSP Go's digital direction the right direction?
Jun 9th
Greetings Readers!
Yesterday, I talked a bit about the PSP Go and the fact that you will have to buy your accessories all over again. Today, I want to address Sony’s new digital direction with the PSP Go.
Like I stated yesterday, I have two PSP-1000 units and love them greatly. While I love them and am often attached to the hip with them thanks to my carry case with a belt loop, the curse of them is the UMD disks. Honestly, I don’t care the least bit about how much weight or size that the drive adds to the PSP. I don’t even care how much more battery it uses by running compared to a digital version of a game, but what I do care about are having working disks. If you have had a PSP for any length of time, you are probably well aware of the UMD breaking issues. For those that don’t know, the clear plastic on the front of the disk has the tendancy to partially break causing the disk to be out of place and only play a small percentage of the time. This is extremely annoying when you spend $40 or whatever on a new game. The fact that this has happened to nearly my entire UMD collection is the sole reason that I only pirate games on the system now (I freely admit to being cheap but it has no relevance here as I have always enjoyed paying for games compared to other forms of entertainment).
I am not alone in this as many people have taken to the haven of piracy to be able to play their games when they want. This is obvious when you look at the PSP piracy numbers. Luckily, I think that Sony has partially solved this problem with the PSP Go and its lack of a UMD drive. Personally, it takes away my reason for pirating games because the UMD problem will no longer exist except on my old PSPs which I will continue to play thanks to the wonders of homebrew. Sony’s decision to go digital only is a great way of combatting the UMD issue and piracy at the same time. Of course when it comes to piracy and hacking, this will likely mean very little. If you have followed the hacking and homebrew scene as much as I have since the first days of the PSP, you will know that often within days, if not hours of a new firmware release on the PSP, the hackers have not only bypassed the new security measures, but they are adding the new features into their own custom firmware. While I expect it to take a while for the hackers to break the PSP Go, I have complete faith in them that they will be running thier own code on the device within a month (this is my official prediction).
Unfortunately, the move to digital presents a new problem, storage. UMD disks are capable of storing 1.7GB worth of information. While not all games use that much space, when you consider the fact that the PSP Go has a 16GB internal drive, you are going to run out of space very quickly. With Sony’s announcement that you will also be able to download movies and tv shows to the PSP, that internal drive is looking even smaller. I believe this is going to be the main problem point for the PSP. Sure, you will still have the Memory Stick Pro Duos that you can put in the device, but any pirate will tell you that having your content on them is a major pain. Speaking for experience, having to put games on Memory Sticks will end up with you having a small pile of memory sticks with little knowledge of what content is on which stick. If this wasn’t bad enough, the sticks still aren’t that cheap for larger capacities. I will admit that they have come down considerably since the time of the PSP launch when you were lucky if you could get a 1GB stick off of ebay for $150 (same when the 2GB came out and so on), but it still adds a large chunch to the overall cost of the device. If you only have a few games, this isn’t really an issue, but if you want to use the device for gaming like it is intended, this could be a real hassle.
Ultimately, I think this is a good strategy despite its flaws if for no other reason than it fixes the UMD issue. While I will admit that details are still a little scarce, I think this is the direction that they must head but if they don’t do it right, it will screw the customer severely as well as themselves. Here is to hoping that they do what is best for the consumer instead of their bottom line!
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-Jeremy “pcnerd37″ Bray
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