Today in Joystiq: February 11, 2008

When there's a will, there's a way.

When there's a win, there's Heck.

You know Kuturugi TRIED dual analog on PSP, right? According to him, people were constantly dropping it.

Given how the PSP is designed, I can believe it. I personally haven't had difficulty with the thumbpad for mine since I have it resting in the palms of my hand. However, I know friends who "angle" the handheld for better use of it since their hands are larger.

Sony should hire this guy, but also Dark_AleX and Ben Heck, then we'd have a great design, great hardware and great firmware.

There first mistake was that they chose to stick with the optical drive instead of using flash memory, so they had to build the slim around the UMD. In other words, not much to work with.

Agreed. They need to scrap this UMD crap. By the time PSP2 is ready to enter the market, memory sticks won't cost that much to produce. Hell, 2 gig sticks can go as cheap as 20 bucks these days, and UMD's can't hold that much content anyway.
I'm not saying they should use memory sticks because that would probably be easy to pirate,

By the way, I meant 7 year life cycle.

Sony won't, because they would have probably invented another optical drive technology which would still store even more data than flash technology (despite flash getting cheaper).


Under the pretext that next-gen portable gaming needs that.

@ StefenRafael

and the award for creepiest avatar goes to...

lol but all jokes aside, i agree with what you saying. we wont get a second analog stick this generation cause it would completely alienate the old PSP users which would be alot worse than what the Slim is doing right now since it only adds a couple features. but opposed to everyone else, i dont think UMD was a bad choice at the time they decided to put it in there. 1.8GB on a small, hard to pirate (or so they thought) disc. but now flash memory is ALOT cheaper and leaves them with an option to have even more space and save battery. i dont mind having just 2 front buttons though, i think having all 4 would get a bit crowded on the back. i think when the PSP2 drops, itll have a second analog stick and flash memory.

"Hell, 2 gig sticks can go as cheap as 20 bucks these days, and UMD's can't hold that much content anyway."

You're fucken kidding me right? 20 bucks for the medium, lol. Even if they get it down to like half that, that's still ridonkulously expensive. Why do you think they moved from cartridges to optical media? What does a DVD cost to produce these days? Gotta be a matter of mere CENTS.

Thank you, whome.

I was hoping SOMEONE had some goddam sense in regards to the UMD issues in PSP. Look, Sony HAD to go UMD. Period. This was not a choice by any stretch. UMDs, when they were first rolled out, were actually cheaper to make than a dual layer DVD (since then, both have gotten cheaper). Flash media, meanwhile, would have brought the price significantly higher. How high? At PSP launch, a 2GB MSPD was $300 (and they were STILL sold out at most online and local retailers for months). My how times have changed. Also, you people forget, look at the industry. You really think we're beyond the point of retail channels? Your average consumer still likes the idea of OWNING their media. PSP couldn't have been solid state media. Period.

The average consumer is also a moron. Digital distribution should be the way to go and who knows if Nintendo will do the same with the DS? I'm pretty sure people are going to eventually get sick of brick and mortar traps, and once they find out they can download games then they won't have a reason to go to Gamestop/etc unless they need to sell games.

It would be nice for games to be put onto flash memory as mentioned earlier, but it is expensive. I think it would be better if the PSP had internal memory in the future. Just keep in mind that Sony DOES sell movies on 2 GB memory sticks, and think of how that could be applied to games when they become cheaper. It might not have been that profitable to produce these and sell them for $40-50, but they still did it and you will still see them in stores.

lol one of my buddies went apeshit over that same mock up. he was pissed because he had just bought an 80GB a couple days before it dropped. i dont know how you could believe that Slim PS3 mock up though, it wasnt that good. no this on the other hand...

Wow, I agree. Part of me sees this and thinks "awesome." But then part of me remembers the finger hell that was the GBA SP and thinks looks aren't everything. Besides, as you stated, this design doesn't solve the dual analog problem of high drop potential.