PSP: Opinions?

[woodman19_99]

Well, with Christmas money in and b-day money upcoming, I was thinking about getting a PSP for myslef. Only problem is, I have never used one and don't know anyone who has one.

I have read the CNET reviews and stuff and they seem to like it, but I want to know is if any of you have guys/girls have used one, what do you think? Is it worth the money, or would it be better spent on say, upgrading other home electronics (bedroom TV, Computer)?

Any opinions would be appreciated!

Thanks
Wood

 

[highwayman]

What's a PSP?

 

[woodman19_99]

Sorry, shoulda been more clear. It stands for PlayStation Portable.

 

[highwayman]

ok thanks...

 

[Gonz]

It ain't X-Box 360

 

[Gato_Solo]

I'd avoid it. Seriously. It's nothing more than an overpriced and underdeveloped GameBoy...

 

[woodman19_99]

It ain't X-Box 360

Yeah, but it ain't $500 either. Plus I rarely use my Playstation as is, because I use the computer significantly more for gaming...

I am looking for something more in mobile entertainment...

I'd avoid it. Seriously. It's nothing more than an overpriced and underdeveloped GameBoy...

I am just wondering, is this comment from experience, or just from a dislike of Sony or mobile products or something else. Honestly, just curious, not trying to sound like a dink...

 

[greenfreak]

I'm not into portable gaming so I don't really have any info for you on this. But I will say that, after owning an XBox for a year and seeing all the crap surrounding the 360, that I'm waiting for the PS3 to come out before I consider any other gaming console.

I've always been a bigger fan of PS anyway. And I keep reading bad things about the 360.

Good luck with whatever you decide to do.

 

[Gato_Solo]

I am just wondering, is this comment from experience, or just from a dislike of Sony or mobile products or something else. Honestly, just curious, not trying to sound like a dink...

As bad as Nintendo is with proprietary game cartridges, PSP is worse with the mini-CD's. I can get a game for my GameBoy Advance for less than $30.00. You can't get a PSP game for that...video, either. You also have to contend with limited software options. A high price to pay for a system that gets used rarely. The PSP is also much more fragile than the GBA. I actually like Sony, but they blew it on two fronts out of three...

Durability and Price.

 

[greenfreak]

As bad as Nintendo is with proprietary game cartridges, PSP is worse with the mini-CD's. I can get a game for my GameBoy Advance for less than $30.00. You can't get a PSP game for that...video, either. You also have to contend with limited software options. A high price to pay for a system that gets used rarely. The PSP is also much more fragile than the GBA. I actually like Sony, but they blew it on two fronts out of three...

Durability and Price.

I don't know if this is true or not but Rusty told me that the Xbox 360 won't play regular XBox games. I told him if that's true, it seals the deal for me; no fucking way we're spending that much money on it.

They're all pretty bad with the proprietary shit but you would hope that a newer version of the same console would be backward compatible. But we are talking about M$ here. Are all Nintendo GameBoy cartridges compatible with each other, even the Advance?

I buy used wherever possible and sell back any game I haven't played in a month. It's just not worth it to buy new. Wait a week and someone will have beat the game and brought it back.

 

[HomeLAN]

Not entirely true.

Of course, you'll need a full Xbox 360 with the live stuff to d/l an emulator....

 

[Gonz]

Yeah, but it ain't $500 either.

True. I'm just another who has no use for portable gaming. Not much use for consoles either, though my kid loves his PS2, N64, GameBoy & GB Advance.

IF, and that's a big if, I were to buy a console, it'd probably be the 360...that things could power an entire starship.

 

[samcurry]

wood,
a couple people at work have them. they brought them in and i played it a little. Movie wise forget it, its like watching it on a pda. 320x? res. you wont see all the detail.
game wise its no different than a gameboy. other than they we very firm in telling me to be very careful with it because it scratches easy.
while they are propietary on the games and movies (udp) you can download software from fairuse site and convert movies you already have.

 

[Gato_Solo]

They're all pretty bad with the proprietary shit but you would hope that a newer version of the same console would be backward compatible. But we are talking about M$ here. Are all Nintendo GameBoy cartridges compatible with each other, even the Advance?

I buy used wherever possible and sell back any game I haven't played in a month. It's just not worth it to buy new. Wait a week and someone will have beat the game and brought it back.

It works like this. You can play any of the old games on the new systems, but you can't play the new games on the old systems. I still play games from the original GameBoy on my Advance...

 

[woodman19_99]

Well this about settles it for me... so much for the PSP. Guess I'll have to spend my money elsewhere... god forbid I save it and think about the future for a second...

As far as consoles go, I bought a PS2 and have played a little, but not nearly enough to have justified the purchase. I'll wait to see if PS3 is better, and maybe I will think about getting it, but these sausage fingers of mine have a tough time with those controllers...

On the other hand, that 73" DLP w/ built in TiVO I saw in Maxim seems pretty sweet...

 

[HomeLAN]

It works like this. You can play any of the old games on the new systems, but you can't play the new games on the old systems. I still play games from the original GameBoy on my Advance...

Also not entirely true. Not for the 360, anyways.

 

[Inkara1]

On the GameBoy series, the newest models have always been backwards-compatible. Same thing with the PlayStation series. I can't think of any other backward-compatible system that didn't need an adaptor or aftermarket emulator to be so... and this is going back to the days of the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis.

 

[Inkara1]

I should also mention, ask Flavio about how you can hack a PSP to wirelessly surf the web. He posted pictures of his PSP with OTC loaded on it.

 

[flavio]

PSP rocks!

It sounds like I'm the only one who actually has one in this thread so I'll tell you a few things....

First of all the games look as good or better than Playstation 2 games...way better than any gameboy.

Movies look pretty nice too. You can buy tons of movies on UMD for $10-15 now. I got "Family Guy: The Stewie Stories" for $12.

If you get a big memory stick for it (I have a 1GB) you can rip a couple DVDs onto the memory stick with free software. You can also use the USB connection to store mp3's, other videos, and pictures on the thing. This makes the PSP a mp3 player, gaming machine, and DVD/mpeg player all in one. The have good deals now on the PSP with a 1gb memory included.

Inkara mentioned the wireless web browsing....but I didn't have to hack it to do this. All I did was download the latest firmware from Sony and the web browser was included in the OS.

Now here's the kicker...there are now emulators that you can run on the PSP that will allow it to play game sfrom other systems and people are making homebrewed applications and games for the PSP. Checkout http://psp-news.dcemu.co.uk/ but here's some of them...

Emulators for PSP

x86/PC
Bochs PSP
PSP Dosbox
Amiga
PSP UAE
Amstrad CPC
CPCPSP
Apple II
Apple II Portable
Apple Macintosh
Basilisk II
Atari 800
Atari800 PSP
Atari 2600
Stella PSP
Atari Lynx
Handy PSP
Atari ST
Castaway/PSP
Chip 8
PSPChip8
Commodore64
c64PSP
PSPVice
Dreamcast VMU
VMU Emulator
Gameboy Advance
PSPGBA
VBA for PSP
Gameboy/Gameboy Colour
Rin
Rin Unnoficial
Genesis (Megadrive)
Dgen PSP
Generator/PSP
Megadrive for PSP
PSP Genesis
MAME (Arcade)
Mame 0.71
PSPMame
XMame PSP
Master System/GameGear
SMS Plus
SMS PSP
MSX
fMSX
Hitbit
Neo Geo Pocket
NGPSP
Neo Geo CD
NEOGEO CD
NeoCDPSP
Nes
InfoNes
Famicontest
Nes for PSP
Nesterj PSP
UO Nesterj
PC9801E
Neko Project 2
PC Engine
Hue for PSP
PCEP
XPCE for PSP
PSX/PSOne
PSPSONE
Pyuta
InfoPyuta
ScummVM
ScummVM PSP
Snes
Snes9x PSP
Snes9x Optimised
SnesPSP_TYL
UoSnesPSP_TYL
UoSnes9x PSP
UoSnes9x PD
Spectrum
PsPectrum
Vectrex
PSPVecx
Wonderswan
Cygne
eSwan
Oswan PSP
Pswan

PSP Apps

2ch Homebrew Web Browser
Aozora
AVI Play
Crazy Paint
CN Reader
Battery Checker
Binary Clock
BMP Viewer
Bookr
DJSP (MP3 Player)
File Asistant
File Asistant ++
FtpD
IRDA File Transferer
IRDA Capture Program
Jpeg Viewer
Kitty Book Reader
MikMod Player
Nano-X (windows)
Notepad
Onscripter PSP
P-Sprint
PDA to PSP
PDF Reader For PSP
PepViewer
Pixie (ebook reader)
Portable VNC
PSP-PDA
PSP Advance
PSPad
PSPaint
PSPick
PSP Calc
PSP Calendar
PSP Email Client
PSP File Manager
PSP Ftp Client
PSP IR Remote
PSP Launcher
PSP Kick
PSP Mag Launcher
PSP Media Centre
PSP Media Player
PSP Mod Play
PSP Oto
PSP Radio
PSP Reader
PSP Remote
PSP RSS
PSP Rhythm Composer
PSP Philips Remote
PSPPOP
PSP Python
PSPSchedule
PSP Ted
PSP Timer
PSP Tiny SID
PSP VI
PSP Weather
Scrabble Assistant
Secure Text
Sexy PSF
SVG Viewer
Tedzero Browser
TextViewer
Text Base Browser
Timidity++
V Card Reader
Wifi JukeBox
Wifi Multi Test
Xynth
YDict
YM Module Player

PSP Homebrew Demos

3d Dot Demo
3d Duck Demo
3d Reflection Demo
3d Wireframe Demo
4k Intro
Binary
Cel Shading Demo
FuckTro
IRDA Demo
Hello World Demo
Killing PSP
Life Game
Madoka Park
Mario World Demo
Micro Game Engine
Old Skool Demo
PSPlasma Demo
PSP Flower
PSP Sound Demo
Spherical Harmonics
Steel Demo
Taoism
Tank Demo
Terrain Demo
Trivia
Ty Shooter
Vectorballs
Wirebox
WirePSP

PSP Games

3d Chess
Agenaworld
AiTetris
Angband
Arkanoid
ASTC
Attack Mutants
Battleships
Beats of Rage PSP
Bejeweled
Blackjack
Birds
Car Game Show
Casino Addict
Ceres
Chinese Flash Cards
Core
Cubez
DJ Dots
Dodge
Doom PSP
Doujin
Dual Tetris
Escape
Freecell
Ghost In The Matrix
GuessPSP
HaCkaH
Heretic
Heretic for PSP
Hexen-PSP
Hitofude
Higher or Lower
JzBMSPlayer
Kanji Flashcards
Karuna
Karma Pong
Lulines
MazeGen
Nethack PSP
Noiz2sa PSP
Pokothin 2
Polygon
Pong Game
Portable Tetris
Prof Ships
PSPong
PSPuzzle
PSP Blackjack
PSP Bruce Lee
PSPdePon
PSPQuarium
PSP Pacman
PSP Revolution
PSP-Rick
PSP_Rk
PSP Chess
PSP Go
PSP Kobo
PSP Maze
PSP Sudoko
PSP Sokoban
PSP Solitaire
Puyo Puyo
REminiscence
RoboTORN3D
Rock Paper Scissors
Rogue Clone II
QuakePSP
Scorched Earth
Sennin
Simon
Simpleturn
Sinobi
Small Maze Generator
SmashG PSP
Snakman
Snake PSP
Spout
Squarez
Stardust
Sudoku
Super Pong
Tag
TehPWN
Telecran
Terra Incognita PSP
Tetris (ear)
Tetris jp
Tetris PSP
ThrottleX
TP Shooter
Troubles of Middle Earth
Tsukihi Minti
Yahtzee PSP
Yokero 1

 

[Gato_Solo]

PSP rocks!

It sounds like I'm the only one who actually has one in this thread so I'll tell you a few things....

First of all the games look as good or better than Playstation 2 games...way better than any gameboy.

That wasn't in doubt. It's not just about the picture, though, as you get to in the next line, or two...

Movies look pretty nice too. You can buy tons of movies on UMD for $10-15 now. I got "Family Guy: The Stewie Stories" for $12.

Sorry. I have enough problems trying to justify a portable DVD player to watch movies on when I'm travelling...and they have much bigger screens, and are much cheaper.

If you get a big memory stick for it (I have a 1GB) you can rip a couple DVDs onto the memory stick with free software. You can also use the USB connection to store mp3's, other videos, and pictures on the thing. This makes the PSP a mp3 player, gaming machine, and DVD/mpeg player all in one. The have good deals now on the PSP with a 1gb memory included.

At the price they charge, shouldn't that memory stick come with the system? I'm all for getting new tech, but if I have to reach too deep into my pocket to get accessories that should come with the system, I kinda balk at the initial price.

Inkara mentioned the wireless web browsing....but I didn't have to hack it to do this. All I did was download the latest firmware from Sony and the web browser was included in the OS.

So you had to load up something else that should've come with the system you paid top dollar for. Looks like Sony has been reading Micro$oft's playbook. Note. I'm not dissing your PSP...just the marketing and accessories that come with it...or not.

Now here's the kicker...there are now emulators that you can run on the PSP that will allow it to play game sfrom other systems and people are making homebrewed applications and games for the PSP. Checkout http://psp-news.dcemu.co.uk/ but here's some of them...

At least you don't have to pay 'through the nose' to get those. All the things you mentioned, though, should've been provided by Sony from day 1...except the emulators, which may have royalty and/or copyright problems associated with them.

Sony was in a rush to get the PSP 'out the door', and caused two things...problems in the firmware and price gouging. The firmware is fixed, or you wouldn't be as happy, but the price gouging will continue for at least another 4 months....if they actually fixed the firmware during the interim...