[Definitive] Sony PSP Thread

[Dazzla Veteran]

I guess this kind of thread would make a good reference for PSP information such as previews, hands on, import information, facts and figures etc. to go along with the DS thread. The second it gets into arguments is the second posts get removed and warnings issued.

Here's some links to some hands on previews of the hardware unit itself:

Hardware Hands on

Gamespot

IGN

Play Asia

Lik-Sang

As you all know one of the PSP's strong points is it's media facilities, here's a round up of the capabilities of Music, Movies and Photos on the go:

MP3 Information

For managing files, the PSP supports a folder structure like mid- or high-class MP3 players. For example, you can throw a bunch of classical tunes into a folder named "classical" and also throw in a library of rock tracks under another folder named "rock" and then switch between playlists at will. The PSP also supports m3u playlists, so you can arrange your tracks in the order you prefer.

That sort of MP3 support is a welcome addition in my books, especially the ability to structure with folders and playlists. Not everyone has an MP3 player but suddenly it's in the realm of a lot more people. You can dump the Music straight onto the MS Duo in a card reader or connect the PSP via a USB cable to your PC. What a good time for a pic:

Photos and Movie support (Memory Stick):

It's a similar story with Photos and Movies as it is with MP3s, a variety of formats are supported:

Atrac3plus

MP3

JPEG

MPEG-4

(I believe more as well such as BMP and PNG but I'm not sure, watch this space for updates)

Atrac3plus will probably be used for any music bought in Sony Online music stores, if you wish to play these on the PSP (Protected Atrac3 songs) I believe a MS Duo with MagicGate technology is required. This is only for playback of protected content, regular MS Duo's (and Duo Pros, Pros being faster) work perfectly in the PSP with full support for all unprotected content.

Video

Regarding video support via Memory stick, Sony will be updating their conversion software called "Image Converter", this is currently used to convert video to play on Sony's Clie range of PDAs. A Beta of version 2 will be out just after the Japanese Launch (Dec 12th) with added support for converting video to the PSP. Here's a breakdown (albeit in Japanese) of the amount of video at varying qualities you'd get on a 1GB MS:

In the highest quality mode you'll get over 4 hours of video on a Memory Stick which the battery will outlast according to various hands on impressions of the unit where battery life has been tested. For the majority of people who'll be wanting media on the move (count me in there :D) a 512MB stick will do and at standard quality you're getting close to 4 hours of content on that Memory stick (just enough for RoTK: EE ;) )

What better way to make use of the glorious 16:9 widescreen LCD on the unit:

This picture fully demonstrates the 2 directions Nintendo and Sony have gone with their handhelds. 2 smaller screens VS 1 huge widescreen, your choice:

Just as we were all familiar with the XMB (Sony PSP operating system) interface, the units sneaking out have a new red tint to the menu system. This is actually based on the calendar with each month having a different colour, check out some photos:

PSP XMB Menu colour change

Importing

First things first, if you haven't pre-ordered a good few months ago and you want one this year, you're probably out of luck. One of the few ways to get one is overpriced units on eBay in a week or 2. In my opinion it's not worth the potential downfalls and I myself will be waiting until the US and UK launch which will be happening in March 2005. Sony have themselves confirmed that games will be multiregion which is good news for all us handheld fans used to Nintendo treating us so well.

The same can't be said regarding UMD movies, they're broken down into regions in the same way DVDs are; so the US is region 1, Japan and the UK region 2 etc. My personal opinion is that movies on UMD will flop dramatically, especially considering the ease in which someone can buy the DVD and dump it on a Memory Stick to play on the PSP. But at the same time I image every PSP owner will buy 1 UMD movie, 99% likely that it will be Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children as well :D

Games

Reviews are slightly scarce at the moment, with only Famitsu (well respected Japanese Magazine) having scored some games for the PSP launch:

Ridge Racers (PSP, Namco): 8 / 10 / 10 / 9 - (37/40)

Minna no Golf Portable (PSP, Sony): 8 / 8 / 10 / 9 - (35/40)

Dokodemo Issho (PSP, Sony): 8 / 8 / 7 / 7 - (30/40)

Armored Core: Formula Front (PSP, From Software): 8 / 7 / 8 / 7 - (30/40)

Kotoba no Puzzle Mojipittan Daijiten (PSP, Namco): 8 / 7 / 8 / 8 - (31/40)

The surprise of the lot there for me is Ridge Racers, 2 perfect 10's, a 9 and an 8 (each game is reviewed by 4 people, each marking out of 10) is shockingly impressive and I imagine that's a must have (although not reason enough for me to import a unit).

Other games I'm looking out for are Hot Shots Golf (Minna no Golf Portable, 35/40), Ridge Racers of course and a game called Mercury. Mercury will be a UK launch title and is created by Archer Mclean who created who developed all the top quality Cueball games for PC and consoles. The concept is simple, a blob of Mercury inside a maze, a tilt sensor and you tilt the PSP guiding the blob of Mercury to the goal. Starts of simple, then you get different colour Mercury and coloured switches. This sounds like it's going to be addictive and frustrating at the same time :woot: here's some more information:

Mercury at IGN 1, Mercury at IGN 2

Here's some links to various PSP games I think are of note:

Ridge Racers, Hot Shots Golf, DarkStalkers, Lumines (puzzle game from the same team that brought us the amazing Rez on DS and PS2), Tiger Woods PGA Tour (whether the control system will match the DS's awesome touch control swing action is yet to be seen), GT4 Mobile, Metal Gear AC!D, Wipeout Pure.

Retail Packages

The PSP comes in 2 flavours, the plain vanilla PSP which comes with the Demo disc and the, um, nothing... which is priced at ?19,800 (~$180) and the Value pack which includes the PSP, remote control, PSP headphones (iPod alike as well, I bet that's no accident!), carry case (gotta protect that beautiful screen), carry strap and 32mb MS Duo; that's priced at ?24,800 (~$235). The decision is yours, personally I'll be going for the value pack, I'll be throwing an extra battery pack as well.

Battery Lifeb>

This is almost a taboo subject and one which hasn't been covered as much as it has. The most common misconception though i"...the PSP will have 2 hours battery life..."i>. This is simply false, the worst figures quoted so far were 4-6 hours for gameplay with simple games such as Lumines eeking out more battery life and games like GT4 Mobile (and I imagine Ridge Racers) hitting the bottom end of the scale (around 4 hours gameplay).

Other functions take varying amounts of battery life, the MP3 being the least greedy with up to 10 hours MP3 playback with the screen off. From hands on impressions we have foudn out that playing a UMD movie (one of the movies on the Demo Disc) continuously with the screen on at full brightness gave 4 hours and 20 minutes of battery life. That's extremely good in my opinion, constant disc access and full brightness whilst dencoding a MPEG4 encoded movie sounds pretty strenuous so it's pleasing to hear it last that long; far more then a comparable portable DVD player (in my personal experience) and far more pocketable!

Hopefully I've caught a nice little chunk of info, feel free to add whatever, more hands on, links to game impressions etc and I'll update the first pos:happy:y: hopefully it wasn't too boring a read and don't forget to vot;);), just to keep the levels of interest up, here's another photo to keep you salivatin:D:D

Update 1b>

Hands on impressions of the battery life is coming out:

MP3 playback - 9-10 hours

UMD video playback - 4-5 hours

Ridge Racers - ~5 hours

It's looking good to me!

Wipeout Pure Movie (Right click save as)

Update 2b>

PSP Europe launch details starting to become apparent, SCE Europe had a press day on the 9th December to start gathering pace for the Europe launch, they displayed 9 games that will be available on or around launch:

Games Preview Part 1

Games Preview Part 2

Games Preview Part 3

The 9 games on offer were:

WipEout Pure, Formula One, WRC, Ape Escape, Hot Shots Golf, Ridge Racer, World Tour Soccer, Fired Up and MediEvil.

Also announced was the (hopefully copied again and again) feature of custom soundtracks, Formula One (not the obvious choice for a custom soundtrack) will have the ability to pull music stored on your memory stick to use as a custom soundtrack in the game!

[Jonathan Downin]

Very nice post Dazzla! I will definately be picking up one of these.

[sundayx Veteran]

aite thanks for the condensed info. 2 more days, cant wait

and im jsut gona ignor manicdvln.

edit: oh yeah. the review, the golf rating, its missing a end bracket ). just a head up.

[Dazzla Veteran]

aite thanks for the condensed info. 2 more days, cant wait

and im jsut gona ignor manicdvln.

edit: oh yeah. the review, the golf rating, its missing a end bracket ). just a head up.

585079097[/snapback]

Missed that one :D

As some of you have noticed off topic posts are simply being removed, don't waste time posting if it's going to stir up an argument.

[Steve]

Looks really nice. I've never owned a Portable 'console' before, none at ALL have even caused a second glance until now. This PSP looks pure class, and much better for watching media on the go than my SonyEricsson P900! :p

Any ideas on a UK Price / Release date?

[Mx]

Looks very sweet, I probably will be picking one of these up!

[Dazzla Veteran]

Well, directly translated it's around ?123 based on 24,800 Yen for the Value pack, but there's not a chance in hell we'll get it that cheap. If I were to hazard a guess I'd say perhaps ?140-160 for standard and ?190-210 for the vaue pack? I'm hoping Sony surprise us and launch at something like ?129.99 for the base pack and perhaps ?159.99 for the value pack. That doesn't seem too unresonable. I believe launch dates have been chopped and changed, the most solid date I've heard is 18th March 2005 in the UK. Not an unberable length of time to :Dit :D

[sundayx Veteran]

so, dazzla did you preorder one? will we see a first impression thread on the psp anytime soon?

[.....]

That's a really nice idea with the xmb interface changing colour based on month, but hopefully you'll be able to set it manually as well. (like the DS) I don't think some people will be pleased to buy their PSP and find the interface purple/pink. (depending on when they buy of course) :laugh:

[Dazzla Veteran]

so, dazzla did you preorder one? will we see a first impression thread on the psp anytime soon?

585079160[/snapback]

I did initially, but I cancelled it. I've got my DS to keep me occupied for the short term at least. I'm slightly wary on potential issues such as battery life, any hardware and software changes that might be made to the unit in the 3 months before the western launch and other niggly things. In the end 3 months isn't a huge length of time to wait, plus there'll be a more appealing game line up as well.

So no, no Dazzla's First Impression :p :D

[Manicdvln]

new PSP,DS reviews

If the PSP doesn't become the biggest thing ever, I'll eat my kid's Puma's.

by John Davison, Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine

I was lucky enough this week to get some extended exposure to the PSP. One of the best things about this job is that every now and then you spend some time with something, and it dawns on you during the presentation that you're witnessing the start of something really big. If the PSP doesn't become the biggest thing ever, I'll eat my kid's Puma's.

Handheld Wars

by Sam Kennedy, 1UP.com

The PSP left such an impression on me that I spent a good portion of my journey back home conjuring up cool PSP game ideas (which I should actually write up someday). Seriously though, I left Tokyo with the feeling that the PSP was going to be huge -- I could actually see it becoming the "walkman of the 21st century

Carrie Ratajski 1up.com member

With all the people who feel that it's their own personal crusade to convince me that PSP = ROOLZ & DS = SUX - and you'd be startled at the quantity - I do feel a sort of voracious desire to prove the staying power of the DS, and by extension an unnatural pleasure when I experience a slight success in doing so.

Patrick Klepek 1up.com Member

When I first laid hands on the DS back at E3, I was a leading champion for Nintendo's innovations in the handheld market, but currently, they've shown me through their own releases that they don't even care. Super Mario 64 DS is not a proper showcase of the promised creativity innovations at work.

PSP WINS!

[Homie]

I just had an orgasm of nerdish joy

[Manicdvln]

PSP Hands-on by a Nintendo fan!!

http://forums.nintendo.com/nintendo/board/...essage.id=17897

It seems he loves it!

[Dark_INk]

some of the stylin' like the volume control and earbuds are a blatant ipod rip off-

but the psp'll still rock :D

[BroChaos Veteran]

damn...stop making me drool daz.

i don't know how i'm gonna make it til the spring without one of these.

it's all the stuff i want in one device. and i personally wouldn't want a phone or a camera mixed in with a device like this, so thats why i don't like the ngage and things like that.

[Manicdvln]

PSP Battery is amazing!!!

This information comes from "lunlunqq" at the Gaming-Age forums.

OK, some guy i know posted some PSP impressions on a Chinese board. i guess i can translate them briefly.

This guy is in japan now and he got his psp from the auction a few weeks ago. In his post, he basically described his first-day use of the psp.

//Start:

at 8:30, he left home for school with the psp (battery fully recharged during the night before) and listened to mp3 all the way untill he arrived at school at around 9:30. he then checked the battery in the menu: it said "91%. estimated remaining mp3 playback time: 9 hours."

he then watch movie from memory stick for around 40 mins in his class and then checked the battery again: "80%, estimated remaining movie playback time 4 hours". he said he paused the movie and checked the battery several times during that 40 mins (he did that too during the 1h of mp3 playback) and based on his observation, playing movies consuming the battery at least twice as fast as playing mp3.

he then showed off his new psp among his classmates. everyone awed and cam.

he listened to mp3 during his 1-hour home trip again. he watched movie for around 10 mins during that time. after he arrived home, he checked the battery again: 73%.

he said the mp3s sound much better on his psp than on his ipod.

//end

here is the thread where he posted his impression on psp mp3 and movie playback. it's all chinese but at least there are some nice pics. based on his comments, i can see that the age of porn-under-school-desks is coming!

Also, it seems that Ridge Racer lasts longer than expected. Ridge Race has lasted 5 hours in early testing.

[Lexcyn]

Sweet. This definately looks like a must buy when it's released here. :D

[Foodie Monster]

I've decided today that I'm importing one as soon as they are available from Lik-Sang or PlayAsia. I've already have a contact at the Customs Office, so no importing tax for me... MWAHA. ^^

[Manicdvln]

I've decided today that I'm importing one as soon as they are available from Lik-Sang or PlayAsia. I've already have a contact at the Customs Office, so no importing tax for me... MWAHA. ^^

585079821[/snapback]

You are out of luck because lik-sang and asia stopped pre-orders! 200 000 during launch is not enough for retails and pre-orders. You missed the boat a month ago.

[sundayx Veteran]

I've decided today that I'm importing one as soon as they are available from Lik-Sang or PlayAsia. I've already have a contact at the Customs Office, so no importing tax for me... MWAHA. ^^

585079821[/snapback]

please write up a review once you get your hands on it

[wreckk]

I Pre-ordered one from play-asia a few months ago... hopefully there will be enough to go around.

If not i'll cry...

Seriously I will.

[jiggling_john]

yes yes yes! But, the most important question of all...

will a version of pro evo be made for it?!?!?! I'll fail uni for sure then!

[sundayx Veteran]

yes yes yes! But, the most important question of all...

will a version of pro evo be made for it?!?!?! I'll fail uni for sure then!

585080291[/snapback]

THAT IS WHAT IM LOOKING OUT FOR AS WELL. either winning eleven psp or pro evo psp, dont care. as long as the series get to psp, im getting psp for sure.

[BroChaos Veteran]

he's lucky i'm not a mod of this forum ;)

and i will rip all the movies i want legally, since i buy them with my money.

stop trying to be a mod. report if you must, but DO NOT make a post about it.

[jiggling_john]

THAT IS WHAT IM LOOKING OUT FOR AS WELL. either winning eleven psp or pro evo psp, dont care. as long as the series get to psp, im getting psp for sure.

585080334[/snapback]

Exactly, it'd be the only reason I'd buy one... I can't see any info on the konami site or anything :( surely they wouldnt miss an opportunity like this?