Gallant Pig

It definitely travels better than a DS. Any game that incorporates the pen is going to suck on a bumpy ride of any sort.

Get Me Coffee

j123vt_99

you said it has wifi and you were able to connect to your neighbor's internet connection... does it have any web surfing capabilities? also since the game is in a cd-type form, does it skip when using it?

darkside

All I have to say is GTA for the PSP. I'm sold right there. 10 hours of play with MP3s is pretty nice as well.

I'm liking the PSP the more and more. I honestly see this and the must have item for the 2005 Christmas Holiday. Even over the possible Xbox 2.

Josh H

Though keep in mind that a good deal of the DS games don't use the stylus (or even the touch screen period). But the bumpy ride thing is a good point. I never play games while traveling other than flying, and I usually luck out and get pretty smooth flights, if not I'd just pop in a non touch screen DS game or a GBA game.

BeckysBoy

It can make an episode of Family Guy watchable? Wow, it really IS an impressive device.

BeckysBoy

Yeah, I think DS is definitely the way to go for strategy games. You've already got a very healthy library of stellar GBA strategy titles (Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, Tactics Ogre, Fire Emblem, Advance Wars 1 & 2, and several others). Advance Wars DS will be out in the next few months and with the touchscreen and voice recognition elements, I'd think the DS would be perfectly suited for future strategy titles, both RTS and turn-based.

I'm really eager to see what the PSP will have to offer in the way of RPGs. I don't have a PS2 and there are a slew of RPGs that come out for that system that I'm quite envious of. If the PSP hosts the same number, I'll be getting one.

TripWire

I watch Family Guy/Aqua Teen/Sealab episodes on my v710 with the transflash, they are about 10-12 megs each, but of course it's a smaller resolution that it would be for a psp.

Get Me Coffee

C'mon Final Fantasy Tactics? You know PSP will have the FF series on it...plus major support with RPGs games.

Next thought....

Rumors are flying that the PSP will be $150!!!! Nice! Sony is going to make up for the $$ with software. However, in my eyes $150 is just amazing for a portable gaming and media center! If this turns out true Sony is really trying to hack at Nintendo’s DS sales.

If you solely look at VALUE...the PSP at $150 is a much better VALUE than a DS, hands down!

Plus I heard down the road you'll be able to access the web (web browser) on the PSP.

Now it just needs to brew coffee for me and I'm all set!

SpaceBoy

Hmm. 150 and I would get it for sure. I will likely get it either way, now that I can see all the nifty things it can do. My fiance might actually not think it's a game system even, if I show her the cool features.

I have no ps2 or ps1, so any of the games are new to me.. so that's another good point.

Ralph Wiggum

I play my DS on the couch 80% of the time; it's the perfect distraction when I'm casually watching a baseball game.

Get Me Coffee

Same here...never got a PS2

edstein

I don't believe the $150 price point rumors. I'm betting it will be $179.

ElementZ

Thanks so much for a detailed and realistic review. I am pretty much sold on this now. Just thinking about the GTA game and especially FFVII spinoffs

j123vt_99

DS came out in November or so.. It's now Jan. No baseball games (pro or college) have been played since the DS came out. Please to be explaining?

Get Me Coffee

So what does this have to do with Loving the PSP?

Josh H

It was in regards to playing portable gaming in the house, rather than only on the go, as discussed above.

joshd2012

2D fans: Vampire Chronicles

RPG Fans: Gahgorv Trilogy and Polipohenus (or somethign like that).

cheapskate

ESPN Classic... duh!

Or maybe Ralph is just casually watching a baseball game taking place outside his window? Use your imagination - I think the point he made still stands...

belboz

So is this definitely true? This is a limitation in the device firmware rather than say the transcoding/encoding software?

If so, that moves the thing right back into the "wait and see" column in my mind. It looked like maybe Sony had seen the light when they added support for MP3's rather than forcing people to use ATRAC, but this type of limitation (presumably to force people to buy UMD movies rather than rip/encode their own) would just show that they're still clueless.

jw2299

Wow. I had no interest in the PSP until I read all of this. Thank you!

MasterofDVD

The 150.00 price would be nice but I too think it's a rumor. They want to be competitive but I can't see them going that low.

The comments about the games and accessories being higher priced to make up for the cost lost on the unit doesn't both me that much. I don't travel that much so I don't need a huge selection of games and that price would keep me from buying games without really reading up on them first. I could resist this thing right now if they didn't have Tiger Woods coming out on it. It is one of the games I have to buy each year.

I even went as far as to ask my wife if her Wal-Mart discount was good on video game systems. She reminded me that she used it for my replacement XBOX. I probably won't preorder. I'll just pray that they can keep a PSP in stock long enough at Wal-Mart for me to get there and buy one.

Get Me Coffee

sofdec , I'm curious to see how many minutes of film can you store with a 512MB Memory Stick Duo....Do you have a rough estimate? Thanks

thegame370

The new PSM covers the PSP in many areas. One of the many areas they touched on were the battery life and how much film you can store on certain memory sticks. This is what they had to say:

PSM: We coverted a 42-minute, 350MB movie to the lowest quality PSP format video, and it ended up 124MB. At the highest quality, the file size would be about twice that. So, a 256MB memory stick would be just enough to watch a nice quality hour long TV episdoe (without commercials). However, you'd need around 750MB for a solid two-hour movie.

They also said they played Ridge Racer to death with the PSP charged 100%, minimal time spent in any menus, without watching any replays, set to 75% in brightness and volume at its highest. At about 3hrs and 45 mins into play, the power light begin to flash and then just over 4hrs, the game was interrupted by a flashing low battery indicator, and the unit powered down.

sofdec

I use the middle quality (I believe its 384 or something like that -- I think theres also 700 something (And possibly even 1500!)) - 384 looks great to me, and the filesizes are small enough.

60 seconds (30 frames per second, 128 audio, stereo) at the 384 resolution comes to about 3.5MB, so at that resolution, a 120Min movie would be about 420MB. You can easily lower the quality (the one under 384 is also perfectly watchable) or change the frames per second, as well as the audio quality.. Apparently people have gotten 25 minute TV Episodes (Like family guy) to just 20-25MB at a watchable quality (Now I dont know if that means the 32kbps mono sound or what, but they said it was easily possible and didnt experience problems with the video).

One neat thing I just found out myself, is the PSP says "Digital Photos" under the photos menu.. thing is, there is no "Digital Photos" director on the PSP when you plug it in. I got the idea to plug the PSP Memory stick into my camera, took some pictures, then plugged it back into the PSP and sure enough, they do appear under "Digital Photos" if you do that. Its a nice thing for people with a sony camera .