E3: Sony announces PlayStation handheld

quote:It will play games from Universal Media Discs (UMD), which are 1.8GB, 60mm optical discs housed in a minidisk-style plastic cartridge.. The console will be powered by the latest 90nm semiconductor technology, with PSone-surpassing graphics under the control of NURBS (Non-Uniform Rational B-Spline), and a capacity for around two hours of high resolution MPEG4-based FMV "at DVD quality", all of which will be pumped out onto a 4.5", 480x272 pixel TFT LCD widescreen (16:9 aspect ratio). It is also expected that the button layout will eventually resemble DualShock, with a few changes made to fit the smaller size of the console.

I'm pretty much blown away that they can make a PSOne beating machine in a handheld already.. Spinning media is gonna drain that battery though, I hope it lasts more than 2 hours while playing games. I wish they had wireless tech on it, but hey, that'll probably add too much to the cost of the thing..

And like I mentioned in my other thread (I didn't see this one! :)), Nintendo say they're not worried, but when you have the might and money of Sony against you, you HAVE to be worried. The comments I've read from Nintendo pretty much sum up as "we're not worried, we'll concentrate on games - games are the most important thing", which is pretty much what they said with the N64 and Gamecube..

quote:Originally posted by Souri

The comments I've read from Nintendo pretty much sum up as "we're not worried, we'll concentrate on games - games are the most important thing", which is pretty much what they said with the N64 and Gamecube..

Well, it worked for the original Game Boy...

quote:Originally posted by GooberMan
Well, it worked for the original Game Boy...

Yeah but the Gameboy never really had any big competition. Sure there was that Sega handheld, and some other one I can't remember. Nintendo also had the hold over the console market with the SNES, so I'm sure that would help to boost sales too.

Now they have some true competition in the form of Sony, so it will be interesting to see how well they hold up.

The gameboy has a very, very large list of games to choose from, it will take some time before Sony can stack up titles to compete with that.

Sony can lure those GBA developers with leaner licensing costs, and greater profit because of cheaper media than cartridges.. I agree that Sony does have some work cut out for them. Nintendo definately has a large number of titles, and a huge ground base of GBA users (aren't GBA's still outselling PS2's?).
And 1.8gbs!! You could be watching a few dvd's on one PSP disc! :)

Another good thing with the GB is that it's backwards compatible. To me, and I'm sure many others, that means alot. Sony could offer this, though sounds unlikely with this thang.

playing a handheld thats the size of a CD, and abit bigger, wouldnt be good.
but its probably easy to port the ps1 games onto the mini disc.
maybe u can even copy them staight across if u have the hardware to do it.
thats if the hardware is the same.

If they did make PS1 games play on it (ported across to the new disk size) that would be cool as and would solve the small range of games issue.

So Sweet

Pantmonger

Lava monkey: I think the discs are smaller than the average cd, more like Game cubes, maybe smaller.

quote:Originally posted by Major Clod

Yeah but the Gameboy never really had any big competition.

I'd call Sega and Atari pretty big competition... People brought Game Boys for games like Tetris and Zelda, which the other two systems didn't have.

Sega had Columns... well. I liked it. @;-)

*nods*
Columns rocked. I wore many batteries out on that game :)
CYer, Blitz