Michael T Hudson

Sony officials said at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas that the game player will hit U.S. stores in March.

Sony executive Howard Stringer said the console will sell for less than $200.

Sony hopes U.S. demand will be strong for the black-and-silver console, which also plays music and movies. Stores in Japan sold out of the 200,000 PSPs they had in stock within hours of its debut Dec. 12.

Sony officials said the company shipped 510,000 units of the PSP in Japan as of Dec. 31, exceeding its 2004 target by 10,000.

Sony's PSP is being pitted against Japanese rival Nintendo's new DS portable game player. It sells for $150 and hit the the U.S. market Nov. 21, in time for the holiday shopping season.

"The price is such a bargain I don't think anyone is going to be put off," Stringer said of the PSP. "I don't think all the consumer electronics stores had a great Christmas.

"With this price point, the reaction will be the same as in Japan."

Sony, famous for its PlayStation and PlayStation2 consoles, trails Nintendo in the handheld game player market. In addition to DS, Nintendo makes the GameBoy line.

The PSP also is known as the PlayStation Portable.

Nintendo officials said last month the company expected to ship more than 2.8 million units of its dual-screen Nintendo DS console, which is strictly a gaming device with wireless capabilities, in the United States and Japan by the end of 2004.

Draven

What are the battery life reports from Japan? Specifically UMD movies?

I haven't seen much on this.

OldBoy

Is there no place that you can preorder this yet? And why are the games as much as the regular system games? that seems absurd...

Gizmo

You can pre-order at EB, GameStop, Game Crazy....
The prices for games hav'nt been announced yet, so most stores just price them at $49.99 to be safe. Hopefully the game will be $29.99-$34.99 like the DS line.

I now will be picking up a PSP due to the fact it is under $200. However, I will never use the MP3 player, nor the movie player.

indy2029

Why not?

Get Me Coffee

I preordered this at EB last week ($20 down) This is going to be one amazing portable....games, movies and music....AWEsome!

I'm not going to using the UMD to watch movies, it's just a waste of money. Ripping your DVDs to the memory stick is the way to go...you're saving money...and saving battery life.

OldBoy

can you do it online with EB and Gamestop? because they don't even list it on their sites...

Gallant Pig

What's the diff. between using the UMD and burning DVDs to a mem stick?

cheapskate

My assumption would be that the memory stick uses less battery life (no moving parts), while the UMD would have to spin constantly, or at intervals and use up more of the battery. Another huge advantage would be not having to purchase the movies you already own, in UMD format.

But you know what they say about assumption. It makes an ass out of U & an umption...

daniel18

How do you do that?

cheapskate

sofdec talks about it in his review...

http://www.dvdtalk.com/forum/showpos...71&postcount=5

daniel18

But I don't have a DVD drive on my computer.

cheapskate

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...101-125&depa=1

belboz

It was in a display so I didn't get a chance to play with it, but I saw a unit at CES. It was a bit smaller than what I was expecting which is a pleasant surprise since I was worried about how portable it was going to be. And the screen seemed to live up to the hype.

I think this thing will make a really good portable video player. It's smaller than a portable DVD player and is half the cost of the HD based portable players. And its screen is better than any I've seen on either type of device.

And I suppose the fact that you can play games with it is nice as well. I was going to wait to see what the launch line-up of games was going to be before buying one, but at this point, I'm thinking I'm going to pre-order the damn thing.

BeckysBoy

Don't hold your breath for $30 games for the PSP. It looks like Sony expects to make up for the hit they'll take on the hardware by selling the software for $40 and up.

BGPu

I imported it at launch. I've been getting between 4-5 hours between charges with time to spare. I can't complain about it. I've been playing Ridge Racers to death.

I've tried converting videos to watch on the PSP but I'm on a Mac, which doesn't currently have the right video codec apparently. Still, there's already quite a bit of a community ripping DVDs to watch on the PSP. With the right compression, you can fit a few movies onto one of the bigger memory sticks

sofdec

BGPu:
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/25571

iPSP (intelligent Picture and Sound Pusher) is a complete, full-featured PSP management tool for MacOS X with the following features:

* Automatic Game Save Backup
* iTunes Playlist integration, supports Smart Playlists
* iPhoto Album integration, supports Smart Albums
* Multiformat queue-based video converter with multiproccessor support
* Automated "no hands" operation
* Simple options
* Requires no drivers or extensions
* Extensive help via standard MacOS X Help Center
* Works in English and Japanese

Fok

If I didn't have a laptop I'd be more incline to buy one.

musick

Now that CES has wrapped, we bring to you the big rumors from the main floor:

• The Xbox 2 will have a standard resolution of 720p. Of course, the current Xbox supports 720p, though not many game publishers have included the option. Perhaps Microsoft will demand 720p compatibility for the Xbox 2?

• The Sony PSP will debut at $150. Well, that certainly would pop Nintendo’s balloon…

• Samsung is going to release a 5MP camera phone. Crazy!

Back in the real world, the Best of Show award goes to the Yamaha YSP-1, a digital sound system that creates multi-channel surround-sound without all the pesky speakers
http://www.g4techtv.com/screensavers...Stowboard.html

BeckysBoy

First, this was described as nothing more than a rumor (without attribution, no less).

Second, it's becoming clear that Sony's strategy at this point is to take a loss or minimal profit on the PSP hardware in order to get the unit into homes, then jack up the price of software to get a return on that investment. Probably a shrewd move on Sony's part, but gamers should be aware of what they're buying into, because they'll end up paying a lot more to play on the system in the long run.

joeblow69

Hmm, at $150, I'd consider buying one, but not if all the games are going to be $50 ...

Get Me Coffee

Can you get a portable media center for $150?

Gaming, Movies, Music, Wi-Fi....

Here and there I'll get games...$50 fine.

But I can watch endless movies on the Memory Stick and listen to endly songs.

joeblow69

I can already do all that on my smartphone. If I got a PSP, it'd be pretty much for games only. The perfect pricepoint for portable games is $29.99, if you ask me. If I had the choice, I'd rather pay a little more upfront for the system than $50 for each game.

Get Me Coffee

I don't have a smartphone....so that doesn't help me.

Josh H

I still wouldn't pick one up yet as I have no need for a portable media center (wouldn't want to watch movies on that small of a screen, already have a Dell DJ for mp3's) and there's just not enough games annouced for me to shell out $150.

But I agree about the games, no way I pay more than $30 for a portable game as I'd rather spend the money on a console game that will get more attention from me.