developers express beefs with PSP hardware

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BuddyC

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"I was surprised at how small and light it was considering its high specs. But because of that, it looked very delicate at the same time. Also, I'm worried about the fact that PSP's memory stick can only take a small amount of memory. I think it could be a bottleneck for users to use this hardware freely, creatively, and efficiently, If we can use a large-volume internal hard drive or rewritable UMD or if a large-volume memory stick becomes much cheaper, PSP could become as popular as the iPod." - Katsumi Yokota, concept planner and art director of Lumines, Q Entertainment

"There are a few things I would add, though the size of the machine would increase a hell of a lot. I'd have liked to have a microphone built in and also a small hard drive - 4GB would suffice." - Colin Berry, Wipeout designer, Sony Studio Liverpool

"The UMD transfer rate is slower than we would like. They gave us all this memory to work with, but it takes at least twice the time to fill with data off the disk comparted to DVD. We've spent an inordinate amount of time tweaking and tuning to get load times to an acceptable level. It's going to present limitations in future designs for more massive open-world concepts. I'd also like to see a second analog nub to facilitate control in some of our sports and FPS games." - Warren Wall, vice president and executive producer at EA Canada

"A second analog nub could enable 3D games to have independent camera controls, for example. A faster CPU would have also been nice, but this can be a challenging thing to do for a handheld, as the battery life is precious." - Karthik Bala, CEO of Vicarious Visions

Source: April OPM, Issue 91
 
Looks like developers will have to actually make games designed for the PSP instead of taking what works on the PS2 and transferring it! Oh Noes!

I'm not too surprised at these kinds of reactions, though - how many developers have been developing games for the Dual Shock controller for so long and expect to get the same results from a very different (but not bad) piece of hardware?
 
wheresthebeef.jpg
 
"This would have gone over better with a blowjob addon packed in instead of as an additional purchase" - Krypt0nian, GAF boards.


They have a point with the lack of a built in mike though. SONY can make it all better by bundling in a headset with SOCOM again. :D
 
I thought the mods banned several phrases (ie. you get banned for using them) including "Well that about wraps it up for..."

I guess I'm wrong.
 
Yeah Thart quote is the only one that I'm a bit concerned about
"The UMD transfer rate is slower than we would like. They gave us all this memory to work with, but it takes at least twice the time to fill with data off the disk comparted to DVD. We've spent an inordinate amount of time tweaking and tuning to get load times to an acceptable level. It's going to present limitations in future designs for more massive open-world concepts. I'd also like to see a second analog nub to facilitate control in some of our sports and FPS games." - Warren Wall, vice president and executive producer at EA Canada
Click to expand...
I wonder if it's low just to save battery power.
 
"The UMD transfer rate is slower than we would like. They gave us all this memory to work with, but it takes at least twice the time to fill with data off the disk comparted to DVD. We've spent an inordinate amount of time tweaking and tuning to get load times to an acceptable level.
Click to expand...
Well, it's about time you moved your lazy asses and decided to pay attention to optimizing loading routines :P

This comment however,

It's going to present limitations in future designs for more massive open-world concepts.
Click to expand...
Is worrying, but expected at the same time.
I'm questioning how they are going to pull off the Godfather game. Or even something like SSX3.

EA has pretty good engineers for figuring out crazy things however. They were the first to do realtime nurbs subdivision (SSX) or DTS support on PS2.
 
Would've been nice if Sony had supported the standard Memory Sticks and not just the Duos since the larger sticks do go up to 4 gig at this time, plus they've been around longer, are likely to be cheaper at the same capacity, and more people are likely to have at least one already.
 
I disagree, however, with the complaints about memory sticks. Even with 32MB you can keep a small but precious custom soundtrack collection if they want to make support for it in any future game (if that's what Lumines art director and Wipeout guy is complaining about). Sure, faster processor and HDD would be nice, but would at the same time kill the battery. Memory stick drains MUCH less power and even 1GB is not that expensive.
 
It's still a userbase divider, though. There will be PSP owners out there with only the initial memory stick and will developers want to spend time on features that fill up memory stick space that only a fraction of players will use?

(This is a rhetorical question, as that fraction I mentioned earlier could be 1/4, 1/2 or 9/10ths)
 
explodet said:
It's still a userbase divider, though. There will be PSP owners out there with only the initial memory stick and will developers want to spend time on features that fill up memory stick space that only a fraction of players will use?

(This is a rhetorical question, as that fraction I mentioned earlier could be 1/4, 1/2 or 9/10ths)
Click to expand...

???

Given that the PS2 has the exact same issue, except the PS2 card is 4 times smaller than the smallest MS Pro Duo, this doesn't seem to be any sort of issue at all.
 
But the PS2 card doesn't store custom soundtracks or act as a mini-hard drive. This is the concern by Katsumi Yokota in the initial post, that the memory stick could be a bottleneck and that it could really take off if everyone could get a large memory stick.
 
It could be a divider issue if they ever decide to use memory stick as some kind of virtual drive device to speed up the level streaming or whatever. 32MB is not really enough for that, as you can't expect the user to have even 16MB free. Perhaps they would have to have a code that detects whether you have enough space available and then utilize it - otherwise proceed with longer load times off the UMD - kind alike programmers were doing on Amigas with and wothout memory expansion.

For custom soundtrack however, I don't see that being dividing at all. Everyone would like that feature, and everyone can afford to put couple of favourite songs even on 32MB card.
 
Marconelly said:
For custom soundtrack however, I don't see that being dividing at all. Everyone would like that feature, and everyone can afford to put couple of favourite songs even on 32MB card.
Click to expand...

You can't fit that many.

I can sort of see what he's getting at, but if people want the custom soundtracks, they most likely have the music on the PSP MS card in the first place so they could also listen to it outside of the game. If a developer is to lazy to spend the minimal time to support custom soundtracks that's fine, but it's simply a cop-out
 
Speevy said:
I thought the mods banned several phrases (ie. you get banned for using them) including "Well that about wraps it up for..."

I guess I'm wrong.
Click to expand...

That isn't one of the bannable phrases. The similar one that is in fact banned has something to do with selling. :lol
 
explodet said:
But the PS2 card doesn't store custom soundtracks or act as a mini-hard drive. This is the concern by Katsumi Yokota in the initial post, that the memory stick could be a bottleneck and that it could really take off if everyone could get a large memory stick.
Click to expand...
The biggest bottleneck is more likely to be developer hesistance to support rather than consumer unwillingness to purchase larger capacity Memory Sticks. Without trying too hard I can find 256 Meg Pro Duo sticks for just under $40. It's not exactly cheap, but it isn't likely to be unjustifiable either for a lot of people when you consider how many different ways it can be used within the PSP - music, vids, photos, files, game saves - BEFORE you even factor in what special ways in which devs might put the space to use.

You also have to bear in mind that the Memory Stick content can easily be swapped in and out, with the help of a PC for archival of content not currently being used. So even a small memory stick could have the majority of its space focused on the needs of one game.

If devs are still concerned about having limited space to deal with, then they should think in terms of ways they can use the space that's highly scaleable.
 
I wish there was a website all the developers could go to, to complain about various game companies hardware. That website would rule.
 
Legal Step said:
I wish there was a website all the developers could go to, to complain about various game companies hardware. That website would rule.
Click to expand...

You mean something like Fatbabies.com? :-p Probably far, far, far from a good example but it's the closest thing I can think of off the top of my head :D
 
Silkworm said:
You mean something like Fatbabies.com? :-p Probably far, far, far from a good example but it's the closest thing I can think of off the top of my head :D
Click to expand...

UM Fatbabies rock. Crying Bitching Rare staff = :lol
 
*start test*

Πωλήστε PSPs σας, είναι άνω όλων των!!!

*end test*
 
beefs ?

i wonder what they asked them, maybe something like: "what would you like to have seen different with the psp ?"

instead of some just out of nowhere complaints about the psp.
 
Pardon me if I don't even bat an eye. Weren't developers complaining about how hard it was to use the PS2? Yeah, that really blew up in Sony's face.
 
Kobun Heat said:
Pardon me if I don't even bat an eye. Weren't developers complaining about how hard it was to use the PS2? Yeah, that really blew up in Sony's face.
Click to expand...

yeah basicly it was only a handful of developers who knew how to take advantage of the PS2 in the begining such as Square, Namco and Konami etc. But It didn't take that long before more and more started to master it as we all know.
 
SantaCruZer said:
yeah basicly it was only a handful of developers who knew how to take advantage of the PS2 in the begining such as Square, Namco and Konami etc. But It didn't take that long before more and more started to use renderware as we all know.
Click to expand...

:lol
 
sonycowboy said:
You can't fit that many.

I can sort of see what he's getting at, but if people want the custom soundtracks, they most likely have the music on the PSP MS card in the first place so they could also listen to it outside of the game. If a developer is to lazy to spend the minimal time to support custom soundtracks that's fine, but it's simply a cop-out
Click to expand...


So they're complaining that without a built in HD they may "split" the userbase if they choose to use the memory sticks for extra content etc. Last I ckecked, the XBOX had a built in HD and only has a handful of titles that even support custom soundtracks. If the developers are lazy fucks, that's on them, but don't put it on lack of a built-in HD.
 
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