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The PlayStation Phone

engadget.com

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Re: The PlayStation Phone

#51

Post by eru »

CrazedGeek wrote: post #39
lukestevens wrote: post #35

Slapping a Playstation controller on an Android phone is one of those weird last gen/this gen mishmashes that highlights Sony's struggle to cling to relevancy, imo. Surely the iOS phenomenon (and Android & WP7) -- particularly the iPod touch -- shows that for handheld gaming a chunky controller isn't necessary. As Gruber often points out, where _is_ the iPod touch competitor? This is likely to be too expensive to com…

A controller might not be necessary, but for anyone that plays slightly more involved games than iOS has, it's a godsend. Playing a platformer on an iPod touch is rather annoying.

I can imagine an interesting control scheme employing the tilt detection and accelerometers. Do they incorporate those?

Re: The PlayStation Phone

#52

Post by metageek »

noilly wrote: post #29
Groxx wrote: post #19

> For Sony buffs, you'll be interested to know that there's no Memory Stick slot here, but there is support for microSD cards. I... I think I'm going to cry... I never thought I'd live to see the day Sony gave up on their #*@^ing memory sticks...

It boggles the mind how much economic rent and inefficiency is gotten through pointlessly proprietary formats.

And Sony in particular has tried it many, many times, and usually failed.

Beta, 3.5" floppies, Minidisc, Blu-Ray, Digital8, MS...any others?

Re: The PlayStation Phone

#53

Post by metageek »

pedanticfreak wrote: post #32
Poiesis wrote: post #27

I am puzzled as to why the choice of Android was made (assuming it's true). A company with Sony's background would seem to have the requisite OS experience, and one would they would have learned from the recent lessons of why control over your OS is a good thing.

1) Sony uses open source, they do like it. PS2 and PS3 could run Linux. 2) Sony-Ericsson already makes the Xperia line of Android phones. The Playstation phone is the same thing, with buttons. 3) Sony has another strategic partnership with Google Android in its new line of Google TV enabled televisions and Blu-ray players.

Datapoint re 1): the Sony Reader line is built on Linux. Not particularly open, though, since you can't modify anything. (There was some hacking done on the 500 and 505, but later models lack the firmware updater.)

Re: The PlayStation Phone

#54

Post by ansible »

jsz0 wrote: post #37

Touch gaming is great for certain types of games but physical buttons offer a totally different experience. I think a Playstation Phone could have been a big hit if Sony moved quicker. They're just way too late. At best we're going to see some Android games retrofitted with physical button controls and that's just not going to be very exciting. How are they going to convince developers to spend money targeting a non-…

I think a phone with dedicated gaming buttons / sticks can be successful.

I doubt that we'll see many Android games retrofitted to the PSPhone. What would be the point for developers to do that? It is just limiting the market for your game.

The big push will be developed-from-scratch, PSP and PS2-ported games on the PSPhone. If SE does the emulators and such correctly, the phone will launch with a massive library.

The PSPGo and most recent Nintendo DS series systems were massively outdated when they shipped too. And it didn't stop them from being successful. If you look at the specs for those systems (processor, memory) it is laughable. The PSPhone has a 1GHz processor, 0.5GB RAM and decent 3D rendering performance... so it is going to last a long time, at least 5 years.

The other Android phone makers won't want to have dedicated hardware buttons for gaming... so they won't cooperate with SE, and frankly, SE doesn't want them either. They'd rather be the primary phone gaming platform all by themselves, or failing that, carve out a dedicated chunk of the market.

Re: The PlayStation Phone

#55

Post by klous »

metageek wrote: post #52
noilly wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It boggles the mind how much economic rent and inefficiency is gotten through pointlessly proprietary formats.

And Sony in particular has tried it many, many times, and usually failed. Beta, 3.5" floppies, Minidisc, Blu-Ray, Digital8, MS...any others?

Proprietary ATRAC music file format, as used with MiniDisc and their other portable music players.

Re: The PlayStation Phone

#56

Post by ansible »

lukestevens wrote: post #35

Slapping a Playstation controller on an Android phone is one of those weird last gen/this gen mishmashes that highlights Sony's struggle to cling to relevancy, imo. Surely the iOS phenomenon (and Android & WP7) -- particularly the iPod touch -- shows that for handheld gaming a chunky controller isn't necessary. As Gruber often points out, where _is_ the iPod touch competitor? This is likely to be too expensive to com…

A chunky controller isn't necessary for handheld gaming... but we need something better than a flat touchscreen too.

Especially if you're going to play a FPS, you need two analog sticks, and dedicated buttons that you can feel without having to look at. You don't get that with a flat touchscreen.

The PSPhone doesn't have actual analog sticks, it looks like it has a capacitive multi-touch surface. The key thing that makes it all better is that it has two little nubs so that you can feel where the center position is. This is such an important piece of feedback you can't get with a flat screen.

I also don't like giving up some of the screen real estate as controller surface either, but that's me.

Re: The PlayStation Phone

#58

Post by 83457 »

Very interesting approach to analog sticks. Looks like two circular touch pads with a button in the middle. One of the problems with touch screens is that you can't feel the center of virtual control sticks.

Re: The PlayStation Phone

#59

Post by Lewisham »

scrrr wrote: post #57

Apparently the images are fake: http://www.nowgamer.com/news/4488/sony-psp-phone-is-fake

All that says is that the phone is a prototype. "A large amount of dirt under the screen" and an incomplete UI does not mean they are fake.

Re: The PlayStation Phone

#60

Post by Lewisham »

mjfern wrote: post #26

Sony has trailed in digital music, online video, and casual/social gaming. I'm glad that Sony is trying something different to get ahead of the curve as portable gaming converges with smartphones. There are several reasons, however, why I think this device may struggle in the market. For instance, who is the target market? Kids and teen gamers who buy a PSP or DS (I assume parents often pay) or young adults that curr…

Do remember that the average age of a gamer is now well into the 30-40 bracket. PSP has sold well to teens, but there's no cut and dried reason why a PSP phone wouldn't sell well to an older demographic.

Targeting someone like Virgin Mobile out the gate would certainly shake things up.

I also can't help but feel that the PSPGo might have been a trial platform for this... if this phone has the guts of a PSPGo and can download PSP games to it, I think it will sell brilliantly. If it has to have new games written for it, it's going to get lost in the 3DS/PSP2 shuffle and just end up with another version of Angry Birds and a couple of iPhone games.

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