Note: This reply is sarcastic. It's not intended to be an attack on your reply, but it really is. Oh no, the secret's out
!
Mad_AxMan said:
putting it as simply as i can:
find a nintendo ds game that doesnt have a 3+ sticker on it
I live in America, ESRB "3+" rating is "E for Everyone"
. But don't worry, the point still gets across =).
What Mad_AxMan Meant said:
nintendo DS:
good console ... very much aimed at ... the psp, in the respect of both its on screen capabilities, and in what it can actually do. the touch screen feature is very cool, ... and its very very easy.
a good redeeming factor of the DS, is that its backward compattible, so you can play all your ... games on it.
Mad_AxMan said:
nintendo DS:
good console, but very much aimed at a younger audience. its technically inferior to the psp, in the respect of both its on screen capabilities, and in what it can actually do. the touch screen feature is very cool, but at the same time, ive put a stylus through it to see how easy it is, and its very very easy.
a good redeeming factor of the DS, is that its backward compattible, so you can play all your old nintendo gameboy and gb advance games on it.
You know, by "put a stylus through it", I'll guess that you mean you've driven one into the touchscreen (like a stake), and not "I've tested it in as many games as I could find,", in which case -- how'd it do? Did you keep playing? Did it shut off the bottom screen, or the system completely? I'm curious, I can't afford to do much "testing".
Oh, and the manual says it won't play GameBoy/GameBoy Color games. Probably because support on the GBA for the system was emulated, and they finally decided it's time to move forward. It would be disappointing if I still had Pokemon Blue, but I sold all my GB stuff a few years ago.
Mad_AxMan said:
psp:
all in one, does just about everything you can think of, you can even buy 4gb hdd's for it that dont increase its weight noticeably.
I had a feeling there would be some HDDs this big, having heard some people talking about getting 2GB sticks. The most painful part here, however, would be <a href="http://www.atomicpark.com/xq/aspx/datel-4gb-hard-drive-for-psp-w--x2-battery-and-usb-transfer-kit/prodid.22993/buy.software/qx/productdetail.html">the price</a>. This will come off as sarcastic, but...can you only enjoy this all-in-one portable media station if you're rich like Oprah? For those that didn't click, that is the first result Google turned up for me, showing the 4GB HDD retailing around the same price as the system itself (actually assuming on general retail price here, this showed USD $250).
Mad_AxMan said:
it has a pretty sensitive analogue stick so you dont just have to use the buttons (which are touch sensative, unlike the DS).
I didn't know the buttons were touch-sensitive (as with the PS2's controller). I should've expected it, though -- and I imagine I would have if I still had a PS2. The point there being: is there any innovation there at all? Even playing PS2 games where the pressure on the button mattered, did you ever notice it? Or did you continue along merrily pressing buttons as normal, between "just hard enough" and "just soft enough"? I did the latter -- I've never noticed it. For a couple of years after launch I thought I might have bought into a scheme by Sony, their big "gimmick" (yes, that's what button-sensitivity was then, now it's becoming a norm). Then I got rid of the PS2 (gave it to my brother) and bought a GCN and Xbox.
Apparently the sensitivity was just tricking me into thinking I didn't know about it -- because I didn't miss it at all!
Mad_AxMan said:
the ability to watch movies on the bus is rocking, and i would rather shell out £199 for a psp, and get all these features, than £219 and get an ipod video which only has 2.
Ahh, this is refreshing. I removed a rather large chunk of my original reply to wait for someone to bring up the multiple capabilities of the PSP.
Let's recap -- the PSP has games, music, video, photos, general storage (assuming here, haven't tried it), and wireless/internet.
...But how many of these things does it do
well? Let's pass over games for now and look at music.
How well does the PSP do music? It's got podcast streaming, right, but you can only play the streams at hotspots. The audio quality is decent with headphones, but the speaker is too small (unrelated: the DS has loud, noticeable speakers, but analog control is bad). So, why not an iPod? It's got more storage, better sound quality, parades around its own customized interface to sort and add music to it -- which is much easier with cables provided -- and if you just want music, it's cheaper than a PSP.
How well does the PSP do video? It's got a nice, big screen, crystal-clear visuals, and even its own format for a "mini-DVD" that you can buy in stores. But it can't stream video from the hailed hotspots unless you've shelled out <a href="http://froogle.google.com/froogle_cluster?q=locationfree&pid=4858015286356713728&oid=15537968193911062008&btnG=Search+Froogle&lmode=&addr=&scoring=p&hl=en">far out the ass for that feature</a>, rendering the wireless feature (later) useless, when this could've been one of the most interesting features. The movies are kept in narrower DVD cases -- can you fit one in your pocket? And your keys? Cellphone? Portable game system? I want to recommend this over a video iPod, but I can't really cast a vote for either -- watching video on the go isn't my thing, and I know way too many people who just use video iPods for porn (...well, four.). The only big point the video iPod has over this is the A/V out -- if you're on a greyhound bus and they've got TVs everywhere but not movies to watch, you can be all cool, whip out your iPod, and watch Porno Sex Sluts from Behind at the Beach '97 (which you've saved onto your 30GB video iPod that cost you about as much as a PSP) with all the old ladies on the bus who just wanted to get to Ohio.
...But why not, as I asked in the first reply, a portable DVD player? They won't cost you more than about USD$100, and everyone has a DVD player. Or a computer. Or a handicapped-but-trusting friend.
Photos. ...
Well, that was fun. Camera. PSP space is too limited, and it doesn't have the USB camera accessory yet.
General storage. You mentioned that they make 4GB sticks for the PSP. ... 4GB is not enough space for $500 ($300 PSP, ~$200 4GB stick). The PSP is weak in this area, and the proof is in the math.
I can't say much about the wireless/internet play on PSP. I haven't played on the internet, only connected to it and browsed around through a few sites before getting tired of the painfully slow (seriously...why is it so slow?) browser. I haven't played wirelessly because I only know 3 people who own them, and two of them hate each other. I'll skip this and let someone else tell us about it.
And finally, games. Where are the good games going to come from? The games that were fun on PS2 often made heavy use of
both analog sticks and the various actions you could do with them. The PSP's control setup is, essentially, a gimped PS2 -- don't take offense at the bluntness there, though, because that's about how it goes: the PS2 controller has four triggers; the PSP has two. The PS2 has pressure-sensitive square, cross, circle, and triangle buttons; so does the PSP. The PS2 has two analog sticks that also function as buttons with an oh-so-satisfying "click" sound; the PSP has one very small stick (with a very small range of motion) that does not function as a button.
I understand that Sony couldn't have elevated the stick too much -- because they can, will, and do break off. But maybe -- and this is a radical idea -- they could've thought of something new? Holding a PSP, after a few minutes, feels like holding a PS2. Many of the games on the PSP are the same games that the people have long-since gotten used to on the PS2. What about shooting games? The PS2 had the ideal move-look scheme (aside from mouse-keyboard), but relied heavily on the two sticks and shoulder buttons; the functionality of both has been halved. The PSP, I recently read, has more movies than games.
And what's the common complaint shared among all of the features? Storage. The PSP costs a lot of money. Memory costs a lot of money. When you add the costs together, you end up with more than just "a lot" of money. Add to that the weaker control setup because of a butchered version of a near-perfect design, a library of games that's surpassed by a library of specialized-movies, weak connectivity (need to buy a cable to connect to computer via USB AFAIK), and (as mentioned in first reply) the fragility of the system, and there are some problems apparent. They aren't completely unrepairable -- the games coming out could make good use of the controls, Sony could add LAN data streaming, and the system's price could/will drop -- but for the moment, I can't predict that the system's going to be altogether "successful".
Will I predict another Dreamcast? Not yet. But I feel like the PSP is trying to do too many things at once without doing any of them altogether very well. Obviously, in a few howeverlongs, I could look back and be wrong about all of this -- just like the PS2's and GCN's potentials were only recently unlocked (see: God of War, Resident Evil 4), the PSP could have hidden gem potential. But at the moment, as I've said so many times, the better value for the money's got to be either a DS, an iPod, a video iPod, a portable DVD player, a USB Flash Drive, a...
Hmm...everything on that list was a piece of specializes hardware, intended for mainly one function. Believe it or not, that's a coincidence.
Ok, I'm done. Comments & criticism welcome...this one was a little bit more direct than the first, and I apologize for the overall rude tone; I should've written this later, because I'm a little tired.