WOO!!!! PSP 3000

[Niode]

I've got a PSP. Don't need need a brighter screen (the one it has is fine, apart from the response time) and don't want to downgrade my umd drive. I also prefer the weight. Makes it feel less like a cheap toy.

Besides i'm sick of this 'me-too but a year late' thing that Sony has right now. Has anyone seen the 360 chat pad rip off that Sony are touting as 'revolutionary'?. "Nintendo released a light version of their existing handheld? Oh we have totally got to get on that. I know! To make it so we aren't ripping them off, it's going to cost twice as much, have less in it and look the exact same!" "Oh Kaz!! you are such a fucking genius!"

[andymol21]

I've got a PSP. Don't need need a brighter screen (the one it has is fine, apart from the response time) and don't want to downgrade my umd drive. I also prefer the weight. Makes it feel less like a cheap toy.

Besides i'm sick of this 'me-too but a year late' thing that Sony has right now. Has anyone seen the 360 chat pad rip off that Sony are touting as 'revolutionary'?. "Nintendo released a light version of their existing handheld? Oh we have totally got to get on that. I know! To make it so we aren't ripping them off, it's going to cost twice as much, have less in it and look the exact same!" "Oh Kaz!! you are such a fucking genius!"

I just lol'd.

I agree, I've said this in a previous thread that Sony takes an idea from its competitors and puts two of them in its new product. Dual analogue sticks, dual shock, dual shoulder buttons. I can't actually think of any more right now but I had a small list. Playstation has been a copy right off the bat, it started life as an add-on for the SNES, so originality has never been part of its history. That being said, I still do buy their systems, but only late in their life, when they have shrunk them right down and are selling them off cheap with loads of free games. The giant bloated systems that they release at the begining of the model cycles never do it for me.

[Niode]

It's not so much that I dislike the brand. It's that they seem to constantly shaft their userbase these days. Like the stupid thing they do with the PS3s right now. They say they are going to do a price drop, but they just take features out and lower the price. Somebody really needs to tell Sony that removing features is not price dropping. It's shafting the consumer. How many SKUs has the PS3 got now 6?!

The new 80GB version in the UK is a fucking joke. 2 usb ports, no multi card reader, no emulation (at all, not even software). They've said they're not dropping the price of the 40GB. So this new SKU is completely fucking pointless. Amazon have dropped the price on the old one by £15.. great. Why did Sony they do that?! Why didn't they officially drop the price on the old SKU?! Everyone will just buy the new 80GB SKU and that shafts all the stores who have large stocks of these over priced 'obsolete' models. Forcing them to drop the price just to clear them, hence lowering their profit margins. Great work Sony. Honestly, what monkey is running Sony these days? This guy wants shooting (or at least firing from the company) because he has no fucking clue what-so-ever of what he's doing or at least supposed to do.

I'm getting a bit sick of these PSP 'updates' as well. Why aren't they addressing the real flaws of the device? The screen never was much of a problem. It only really affected GTA anyway. Most other games had brighter palettes that didn't smear as much. The 'analogue' is terrible. It's not even analogue, I can never get anything in-between on or off, the only thing that is 'analogue' about it is you can move it in 360 degree. The D-Pad is fucking terrible. It's almost as bad as the 360 d-pad - which is an abomination for 2D games. Now when you couple the thing with the 'analogue' nub, I don't know what's worse both methods available to me are poor. So I tend to hope for games that will let me use both and swap between them when certain conditions require them, sadly they are few and far between, as most games will use the d-pad as a replacement for the lack of shoulder buttons. That god damn square button that doesn't press properly. Some PSPs are worse for this than others. My friend's PSP doesn't even go in, you sort of press it and hope that it registered. Loading times are still terrible on some games. The lack of L2/R2 buttons just makes no sense. Especially when Sony turned around and added PSX emulation. Which makes certain games unplayable (granted they only banked on having certain games available) but still. It's a little short sighted of them not have 4 shoulder buttons. I mean they could have at least had 6 face buttons given the form factor. It all screams form over function. The DS was a dog when it came out but at least it was functional. The DS lite took care of the looks later. Now i'm not here to say that the DS is better or worse, that's another thread entirely. I just wish Sony would address the real flaws in the PSP rather than adding a brighter screen and slightly better speakers, (which will still be terrible and you would still be better off using some external speakers or headphones (which you should be using when out and about. I don't want to listen to your stupid fucking handheld device blipping and churning out terrible music, that goes for all you fuck-heads that have your iPods far too fucking loud, I don't want to listen to your treble as fuck shitty headphones farting out white-noise all the fucking time)). These are all features that they should have got right first time round anyway! I honestly think that the Sony design devision spend 10 minutes on their designs. They just get a cheap chunk of transparent/black plastic and stick the playstation logo on it. Whatever configuration gets all the buttons on and the screen in the middle, thats fine. Most if not all mockups of the PSP were far away much better than what Sony ended up with. Why didn't they just copy them? They did with everything else.

As far as a multi-media device, give me a break, get an iPhone/iPod touch, 8/16 GB internal memory, plays any video/audio format when jailbroken and is gaining quite a games library to boot. If you are one of these people who are on the 'I hate everything popular' bandwagon at the moment then there are a few other PMPs out there that will do a much better job at playing your video/audio files in a much smaller foot print than the PSP. Which, let's face it is;
FUCKING HUUUUUUUUUUGE
That thing doesn't even fit in my pockets for christ sake. Unless you are M.C. Hammer or Pennywise that thing aint fitting in your pockets comfortably.

The one thing that the PSP has going for it is the hacking scene. That's it. Yet Sony are too fucking dumb to realise this and try and stifle it, because in their eyes, homebrew = piracy. Which just isn't the case. So I think i'd definitely rather keep my PSP-1003 thanks knowing full well that it is going to be continually supported by devs and never be hardware locked out of custom firmware for an indefinite amount of time.

[RackGaki]

Niode, you seem to have been slighted by a substandard, first-gen PSP. Sorry?

An upgrade would go a long ways towards fixing the issues you included. The screen on the 2000 is much brighter as it is, which helps with viewing multimedia. Loading times have never been a problem for myself - the longest screen I've ever been subjected to is 10 seconds. Of course, my library consists of:

Darkstalkers Chronicles: The Chaos Tower
Disgaea: Afternoon of Darkness
Generation of Chaos
Ghost in the Shell
Gradius Collection
Guilty Gear Judgment
LocoRoco
Patapon
R-Type Command
Space Invaders Extreme
Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth

You may have some more graphics-intensive games, but with 64 MB of internal memory, I've never had a problem.

The D-Pad is fucking terrible

The PSP Slim & Lite raised the d-pad and improved button feedback. Darkstalkers and Guilty gear kick ass on the upgraded PSP!

I also prefer the weight. Makes it feel less like a cheap toy.

That thing doesn't even fit in my pockets for christ sake.

The slim version, again, went a long way towards fixing the bloated size and weight of the original.

There's nothing I can list to convince you the PSP is a good gaming machine, but I thought some would appreciate a little counterweight to your post. The iPod touch is a very nice (albeit expensive) alternative to the PSP, but it is better suited for someone who prioritizes multimedia over video games.

[lisalover1]

The only thing I use my PSP for is emulators. I don't even play original PSP games anymore.

[The Apprentice]

I'm most excited for the $200 package with the 4 gigabyte memory stick. I can put MP3s on that, right?

This shows off the new screen, in case nobody posted it yet.
http://gear.ign.com/articles/902/902517p1.html

[RackGaki]

I have a 4GB stick for music myself. Would prefer a 16GB, but the size doesn't bother me that much. I've got two dozen albums on there at 192kb/s or above with plenty of space for more.

If you like to blast your eardrums to hell, you will notice that the PSP doesn't get as loud as an iPod.

[RadarScope1]

Just never been interested in the PSP. The DS works for me, and I don't play that many portables.

[GSZX1337]

FUCKING HUUUUUUUUUUGE

I think I found my signature.

[Niode]

Oh man, i've just re-read that post and there's so much swearing in it!

Man I must have been really annoyed the night I typed that up!