Sony's iPod, Gaming-Video player, keitai for $60?

[Taro Toporific]

Sony Details Gaming-Music Player, iPod Rival
Nov 5 -- NEW YORK (Reuters)--Japan's Sony Corp on Tuesday detailed plans for a much-anticipated all-in-one handheld gaming device that includes a digital music and video player and could even act as mobile telephone.
Officials of the world's largest consumer electronics maker also said Sony would launch a rival to Apple Computer Inc's iPod digital music player next year for as little as $60.... Sony described a prototype for its PSP gaming device -- due out before the end of 2004 --

[cstaylor]

Yeah, B.S. It's gonna be $60 without the overpriced Sony memory stick, and another $150+ to get the amount of space up to a standard iPod.

Bleach, Sony.

[Caustic Saint]

Yeah, B.S. It's gonna be $60 without the overpriced Sony memory stick, and another $150+ to get the amount of space up to a standard iPod.

Bleach, Sony.

Exactly. Even at $60 the PSP would be selling at a massive loss. 4.5" color screen, UMD drive - and they don't even have a final design yet! By their own accounts it's going to have USB 2.0, UMD, 802.11b, IRDA, Memory Stick...and they think that'll go for $60?

If they do sell it that cheaply it'll be quite stripped down and you'll have to buy lots of add-ons to get ther full "PSP experience." Hell, the Gameboy Advance SP goes for $99 - smaller screen, single-function, cartridge based. There's no way to make an "iPod Killer" for $60. If it was possible, Apple would be doing it themselves. Jobs has admitted they'd love to have a $100 iPod, but they can't figure out how to do it yet.

[Caustic Saint]

Prototype images from the announcement:





Via The Magic Box

[kotatsuneko]

http://media.corporate-ir.net/media_files/webcast/2003/nov03/1104sony/mrkutaragi.pdf

full deal there

still sony = shit ... :P

[leathernick]

altho a pocket PS is a great idea, i think i'd rather be playing with other things in my pocket, LOL!

[Naniwan Kid]

Can connect with PS3? Didn't Sony jsut announce they are planning to keep the PS2 around until 2010?

[Caustic Saint]

Can connect with PS3? Didn't Sony jsut announce they are planning to keep the PS2 around until 2010?

Yes, they've said it's going to be produced and supported until then. That doesn't mean they're delaying the PS3 until then. There are still games coming out for the PS1, and it's 9 years old. (For a brief period last year, the PS1 was outselling the Xbox in Japan. )

Hell, there are still new games coming out for the Dreamcast, and it ceased production 2 years ago.

[kurohinge1]

... For a brief period last year, the PS1 was outselling the Xbox in Japan. ...

On Thursday, they just opened a new mall (Diamond City) about 10 minutes' drive from where I'm typing this, in Nara, and the massive Toys-R-us store didn't have any batsu-box products at all.

And don't forget the original pocket play station ...

[kidrock12xp]

I don't really see how sony or anyone could really remotely say that a brand new game system would be selling under 100. Let alone 60. I'm with all you guys on how they could make it and sell it for only 60. Let alone why would they. I mean they know they could sell it for more than that so why only 60..... seems fishy to me.

[Welleweirdo]

In Holland they say the PSP is gonna cost 350 euros.
That's a fuckin' lot you know
I still think that the Nintenod DS is gonna whoop the PSP's ass.

[Caustic Saint]

Great, so now you can play their overly-DRMed tracks on two overpriced devices? Sounds like a winning game plan.

[ibiza]

I'm about to explode in my pants

[tatsujin]

Thanks for the info Ultra - your a veritable treasure trove of knowledge!

Do you know if they have sorted out the battery problems they were having? I understand that was the major concern around the product...

If they have then they have one shit hot product thats likely to sell in droves

[Caustic Saint]

Sony to ship PlayStation Portable for under $200

They'd better have one hell of a licensing agreement feeding them cash off every title sold, because there's no way in hell they're remotely close to their production price selling them that cheaply.

[Caustic Saint]

I'm not a big Nintendo fan, but I love them for releasing the DS and essentially forcing Sony down to this price point. Now I can afford to buy the PSP and some games with it too.

Has anyone seen any conclusive statement about Region Code locking on the game software? I know they have Region Code support for movies, but some reports say they might have removed Region Coding for game titles.

Nothing defnitive, but what with Sony being Sony, I'd expect region coding on PSP games.

Another good reason to love Nintendo - DS is region-free, just like every past handheld from them. Not only that, the system runs in 5-6 languages out of the box, so those of us who buy one in Japan won't have to muddle around with language issues in the system itself. (Just in the games.)

[Kuang_Grade]

I wouldn't bet on the PSP being region free, given Sony's overall corporate personality.

I remember reading that, at the US launch of the Playstation, some J Sony people had wanted the selling price to be something like $500, or $100 more than the Sega Saturn's price because "it's a Sony" (and therefore should automatically cost more than every other similar product). Olaf Olafsson, Sony's Playstation guy in the US, basically told them they were full of themselves and that kind of thinking would doom the system to a CD-I like fate in the US. Ultimately, he won out (and was proved right) but his stance alienated a lot of Sony folks and he was effectively forced out shortly there after, despite the smashing success of the Playstation launch in the US.

So, while Sony may be pissed about having to come in at around $200 for the PSP, they are certainly not going to allow anything else to make users (or pirates) lives any easier. IF anything, I expect multiple dumb ass interlocks like they have on Minidiscs...You know, because it's a Sony.


As for Nintendo's region free stance, I think that was mostly due to the fact that gameboys were effectively kid machines (I'd say 2/3rds of the GB games in the US are crappy license based games like Barbie, Bratz, or movie based games that you have to be under 12 to not to just utterly hate) and that grey market importation issues were going to be pretty rare for this audience (granted the advent of the GBA and especially the GBA SP have made gameboys more appealing to adults, but in order to keep the backward compatibility, I suspect they can't plug in region codes now.) Also I think that Nintendo has historically had a pretty regressive licensing and manufacturing agreements for the Gameboy (publisher you are going to pay me to manufacture the cart and then you are going to pay me a license fee on everyone manufactured...if it doesn't sell, that's your problem), so even if there was grey market importation, Nintendo still gets paid and the publisher is the one who takes it on the chin. Nintendo is about 2 millimeters below Microsoft in overall corporate ruthlessness.

[Kuang_Grade]

Wow, this and Red Soxs winning the world series?....Well, that's it, the world must be ending pretty soon. :P

[Caustic Saint]

Wow, this and Red Soxs winning the world series?....Well, that's it, the world must be ending pretty soon. :P

Nah, it's not all sunshine and happines:

Battery life not all that great.

Speaking in an interview with Japanese site Impress PC Watch, Sony Computer Entertainment boss Ken Kutaragi has admitted that graphically intensive game will drain the PSP's battery more rapidly than the quoted figures.

"A puzzle game will last longer, but Ridge Racer will probably be shorter than that," he told the site, referring to the battery life statistics released by SCE last week - which claimed four to six hours of battery while playing games.

The figures quoted by SCE rely on playing with headphones, without using the wireless multiplayer capabilities of the device, and with screen brightness set in a specific range - leading to widespread speculation that using the full power of the system will bring the battery life down closer to the originally rumoured two hour level.

Kutaragi's comments seem to confirm that games which use the features of the console more intensively will drain the battery life faster, and are backed up by the firm's efforts to restrict developers from using features such as data streaming from disc (as used in a large number of PS2 titles) due to their high power consumption.

The SCE boss was adamant, however, that the battery life problem would be solved in future - telling the interviewer that "in the future, we'd like a single charge to last for a flight between Narita [Tokyo] and New York" - a fourteen hour trip.

So if you want a functional unit, wait for the PSP2?

Gee, you think they might just be rushing this thing to market after all?

[Taro Toporific]

Wow, this and Red Soxs winning the world series?....Well, that's it, the world must be ending pretty soon. :P

Shocked By PSP
SCE unleashes another strange marketing campaign for PSP.
November 18, 2004 , IGN -- Walk into a cafe in Tokyo later this month, and you may see a Western-looking mannequin holding a PSP unit and displaying an expression of shock. Don't fret -- this isn't the Japanese National Police Department's latest scheme at warning the Japanese public of the threat of foreign invaders. It's just Sony Computer Entertainment's new PSP campaign....more...

See also the Japanese mannequin company http://www.yamato-creation.com/

[Taro Toporific]

Sony Playstation shortage predicted
PSPs hard to find
The Inquirer, UK, Nov 29
THE PORTABLE PLAYSTATION from Sony appears to be so rare and sought after that finding machines is turning into a quest, according to a report.
Sony, while scoring massive points on the PR/hype front for the PSP, seems to have lost out on the distribution front with huge shortages predicted.
Japan's ITMedia news service reports that Sony has already told major retailers about the number of systems that they will be getting in time for launch and many are complaining that they will not have any.

[Caustic Saint]

Sony Playstation shortage predicted
PSPs hard to find
The Inquirer, UK, Nov 29
Japan's ITMedia news service reports that Sony has already told major retailers about the number of systems that they will be getting in time for launch and many are complaining that they will not have any.

Oh, so it's going to be the PS2 all over again? Build up huge amounts of hype, promise the world, then cut the promised amount of units at launch by 75%?

I guess they'd rather have free advertising in the form of "PSP sold out everywhere!" news stories than make actual sales...

[Kuang_Grade]

Sony Playstation shortage predicted
PSPs hard to find
The Inquirer, UK, Nov 29
Japan's ITMedia news service reports that Sony has already told major retailers about the number of systems that they will be getting in time for launch and many are complaining that they will not have any.

Oh, so it's going to be the PS2 all over again? Build up huge amounts of hype, promise the world, then cut the promised amount of units at launch by 75%?

I guess they'd rather have free advertising in the form of "PSP sold out everywhere!" news stories than make actual sales... :roll:

It's worked well enough Nintendo the last couple of times (written as I glance over my shoulder to look at the 14 Nintendo DS units on my desk, mentally counting my soon to be filthy lucre). Hopefully they'll avoid in the States the whole "mugging-people-in-the-parking-lot-to-get-their-PS2s" they had with the PS2 launch....although you can image someone at Sony US going "well, maybe this time we'll have some shootings over this...that's street cred you can't buy". But I've recently read "jennifer government" and it uses a plot line along that theme (Nike instead of Sony).

And while my PSP predictions (see above my ramblings on region codes) haven't been all that accurate...I don't know if this is going to be a tremendous big deal when it launches here in the US. It's going to be post Christmas, so you've knocked off a lot hype frenzy off due to that. And its not like the GBA or DS are so completely tired that PSP is automatically something like the second coming. And the whole "what exactly is it?...Game machine, PDA, tiny DVD player, big ass Mp3 player with sucky battery life?" question has not really been answered yet. I handled one at TGS and it is definitely a sexy piece of tech but I really don't know how the US is going to take to it.... There will be definite demand at the beginning due to proper conditioning of rabid gamers but I suspect it will be a slow upward climb in the installed base over time (ie, much more like the PS1 and not like the PS2). Spending 5 minutes fighting to do anything with Snake in the J version of Metal Gear Acid taught me that

[American Oyaji]

I didn't even know the PSP was this close to launch.

[Caustic Saint]

I saw one of these in person at Bic in Ikebukuro today.



It was smaller than I'd expected (were those models in the early promo shots all midgets or something?) and the screen was really nice. It was running a demo video loop off a UMD. Video playback was nice, and it was showing game footage as well as some actual "real world" video. (Dolphins swimmming around and some dude kayaking.)

Also of note was the icon list on the back of the box:



Nothing too surprising there, but what's XMB? Since they've said games will be region-free, I'm guessing the world icon with the number 2 pertains to other media. And even thought it's got a USB logo, I don't expect it to meet the mass storage spec. Crap proprietary Sony (windows only) app to get stuff on and off the Memory Stick?

I doubt I'll be getting one anytime soon though. The only early title I'm even slightly interested in is Vampire Chronicle: The Chaos Tower, and if I need a Darkstalkers fix, I can score the older Dreamcast version easily enough.

It looks nicer than I'd thought it would (mostly since it's not as big as I'd expected), but I'll wait for the revised "battery lasts more than 2 hours" version. PSPtwo anybody?

[Caustic Saint]

I saw one of these in person at Bic in Ikebukuro today.

Thanks for the review. Yeah, the design is a bit different from the early prototype pics. I think XMB (Cross Media Bar) is just a fancy name for the media menu.

I realized after I'd gotten home that it still looks kind of big in that photo. It's only got the UMD there for size comparison, and since most people haven't seen one in person, it's hard to gauge how big/small the system really is.

I'd say it's not a whole lot wider than the DS (maybe less than 2"), a hair taller and about as thick as a closed DS. After expecting it to be pretty big, the size was surprising.

If anything, I think the physical size of the battery is why its life is so short. There's no room in the unit for a battery that can power that screen and a drive for any reasonable amount of time.

[NeoNecroNomiCron]

I not just saw it but also played it, there are some funky games (I have the games list at release at home maybe I will post later)

The screen is huge, and very clear 1000 X better than the DS. Anyway, the part I hate about it is the L and R buttons they are mad from ugly clear plastic. That after a few plays will just trun grubby.

[Kuang_Grade]

http://www.play-asia.com/paOS-17-71-7o-74-ox.html

Play Asia won a unit in the pre release auction Sony did as a charity fundraiser for victims of the Niigita earthquake, and they have a bunch of photos of what is in the box and movies of the unit and some of the games that came on a sample disk.

[Caustic Saint]

As of 6 P.M. today, dudes were already lining up in Akihabara to try and get a PSP. I think there are gonig to be some unhappy gamers tomorrow.

But they guys who were there early looked like they were going to have a good time of it - tarps out, lots of food, other portable systems to pass the time with...

Wonder if I should go get in line with my DS?

(Hey, maybe I could finally find somebody to PictoChat with!)

[Caustic Saint]

Ebay here I come!