Lik-Sang has PSP... loading?

Status
Not open for further replies.
R

Random_Hajile

Member
The First Impressions

One thing is for sure, out of the box, the PSP looks very stylish and is a very well-designed concept. Put it next to the NDS and it feels like one of those visions when past meets future. Mostly made of a special plastic with glass effect (you see yourself inside), with great attention to detail and with this beautiful PSP logo surrounded by a metallic circle at the back, the PlayStation Portable is sexy, no arguing about that. The only problem which immediately comes to mind is the fact that every time you touch that special material, you leave fingerprints on your system. For sure, the unit won't look that great after an hour or two, or worse after weeks of playtime, when showing them to your NDS friends and GBA SP buddies. You might have to consider bringing the bad boy to the car wash every week or two. The Lik Sang crew actually wore chirurgical gloves during the whole process of testing the unit and while performing the photo session...

http://www.lik-sang.com/news.php?artc=3545

Loading Times

Loading time and battery life seem to be the big factors which decide about the PSPs success or failure in many gamers eyes right now. While we can't comment on the battery life as of yet, latest reports from Japan about loading times on demo units that actually have access to the games are as follows:

Ridge Racers:

• From power off to Namco logo and title: 16 seconds
• From selecting car/track to start the race: 14 seconds
• Exit the game back to car/track selection: 10 seconds
 
Random_Hajile said:
...the PSP looks very stylish and is a very well-designed concept. Put it next to the NDS and it feels like one of those visions when past meets future.
Click to expand...
Oh no, it has begun!
 
So it takes about 40 seconds to start a race from the start up (power up > namco logo (16 seconds) > car and track selection (10 seconds) > from this point to loading a race (14 seconds))



I like the way portable gaming is headed :/ Graphics sure are nice, but not at this cost.
 
Random_Hajile said:
The First Impressions

One thing is for sure, out of the box, the PSP looks very stylish and is a very well-designed concept. Put it next to the NDS and it feels like one of those visions when past meets future. Mostly made of a special plastic with glass effect (you see yourself inside), with great attention to detail and with this beautiful PSP logo surrounded by a metallic circle at the back, the PlayStation Portable is sexy, no arguing about that. The only problem which immediately comes to mind is the fact that every time you touch that special material, you leave fingerprints on your system. For sure, the unit won't look that great after an hour or two, or worse after weeks of playtime, when showing them to your NDS friends and GBA SP buddies. You might have to consider bringing the bad boy to the car wash every week or two. The Lik Sang crew actually wore chirurgical gloves during the whole process of testing the unit and while performing the photo session...

http://www.lik-sang.com/news.php?artc=3545

Loading Times

Loading time and battery life seem to be the big factors which decide about the PSPs success or failure in many gamers eyes right now. While we can't comment on the battery life as of yet, latest reports from Japan about loading times on demo units that actually have access to the games are as follows:

Ridge Racers:

• From power off to Namco logo and title: 16 seconds
• From selecting car/track to start the race: 14 seconds
• Exit the game back to car/track selection: 10 seconds
Click to expand...
IGN already did an article on the load times. http://psp.ign.com/articles/571/571164p1.html

There are also threads on GAF :P
 
timewarp.gif

mummy.gif

frankstein.gif

thing2.gif
grnogre1.gif
 
firex said:
omg, i bet you have to change the battery pack like 3 times before you can even start racing!!!!
Click to expand...

:lol

Seriously, though...those are fairly long loads for a portable. It's gotta be a slow-access drive and some decent copy-protection scheme to have that happen, I suppose.
 
Lik-Sang said:
Put it next to the NDS and it feels like one of those visions when past meets future.
Click to expand...


NINTENDO DS UNDERWHELMS IN LIK-SANG SHOCKER
ONLY THREE MORE DAYS OF POSITIVE FEELING TOWARDS THE DS REMAIN
ON DECEMBER 12 A NEW ERA IN PORTABLE ENTERTAINMENT BEGINS
ALL HAIL THE ONE PORTABLE CONSOLE FUTURE
PSP UBER ALLES
 
MightyHedgehog said:
:lol

Seriously, though...those are fairly long loads for a portable. It's gotta be a slow-access drive and some decent copy-protection scheme to have that happen, I suppose.
Click to expand...

Didn't somebody else say in another topic that 15-20 seconds is how long it takes for a game to initially boot up in a PS2?
 
belgurdo said:
Didn't somebody else say in another topic that 15-20 seconds is how long it takes for a game to initially boot up in a PS2?
Click to expand...

What does that change? Seriously, it's not just because the ps2 has those sorts of load times that it should be considered as a non-issue on other platforms.

It's not a huge of a deal as it will most likely be optimized in the future, but it's not like it's not a problem either.
 
belgurdo said:
Didn't somebody else say in another topic that 15-20 seconds is how long it takes for a game to initially boot up in a PS2?
Click to expand...

Yes, and sometimes longer. Like I said, it takes 18 seconds for Ridge Racer V to start. All those seconds SOUND pretty bad, but they really aren't in the context of things...

The loading times sound pretty much on par with RRV, which was just fine.
 
Any loading time measured in 10's of seconds is fine by me.

I still remember the hell of loading games from tape with my c64...

..Now that was something worth bitching about.

(Worst that I can remember was F-19 Stealth Fighter, which took close to 45 minutes to load each time you started a mission & took off)

Lightweights.
 
Freeburn said:
I still remember the hell of loading games from tape with my c64...
Click to expand...

I tend to remember the hell of not loading games from tape on the C64. If you were playing at school and the load failed, which it often did, your entire class period was shot - no way in hell you could try the load again.

My 2nd grade classroom had a C64, and I distinctly remember reading entire books while waiting for a simple U.S. trivia game to load.

entire books
 
Ahhh, jumpers for goalposts, candy canes and the sheer nirvana that finally getting a 1541 diskdrive was... good times good times :D
 
yes, PSP load times are acceptable because the C64 had shitty tape loading / the PS2 has long load times. Fantastic.

What is the transfer rate from UMD, i thought it was really fast ? if it's taking 1 minute , how much data is it loading ?
 
DCharlie said:
yes, PSP load times are acceptable because the C64 had shitty tape loading / the PS2 has long load times. Fantastic.

What is the transfer rate from UMD, i thought it was really fast ? if it's taking 1 minute , how much data is it loading ?
Click to expand...

The point of bringing up Ridge Racer V is that it really does not have long loadtimes.
 
Hey now, not just the tape loading, the 1541 didn't exactly set blazing standards :P
F19 was still only cut down to 5 minutes loading from disk compared to 45 minutes for tape.

I'm just saying it's all about perspective & relativity, yes it will be acceptable if you are used to, or have experienced much worse. So for me it's acceptable, nobody elses perspective is going to change that :P
 
So it takes about 40 seconds to start a race from the start up (power up > namco logo (16 seconds) > car and track selection (10 seconds) > from this point to loading a race (14 seconds))
Click to expand...
No. Track selection is included in the initial 16s load. IGN actually had a clarification about it. It takes a total of 16+14 = 30s to start racing, and it's not clear whether you can or cannot play Rally X while the loading takes place.
 
dark10x said:
Yes, and sometimes longer. Like I said, it takes 18 seconds for Ridge Racer V to start. All those seconds SOUND pretty bad, but they really aren't in the context of things..
Click to expand...

Exactly, these are things that you don't think about when playing an actual unit with an actual game.
 
"feels like one of those visions when past meets future"

I get what he's trying to say, but this phrase makes him sound like a complete fucking maniac.
 
Outcast2004 said:
Optical disk media... DUH!

Of course it's going to have loading. How else do you expect the data t get to the system?
Click to expand...

Of course, that is why I hope solid state media really takes off. I do not like long loading times. The price is phohibited right now for the larger variety.
 
Jesus. In the time that it takes to even start up Ridge Racers, I could start up and play a level's worth of Wario Ware touched. :-|
 
except if you haven't seen the movies in Sawaru, in which case you could FINISH PSP Ridge... and 18 rounds of Mingol...
and the whole of Lumines...
plus most of Armoured core..
 
Marconelly said:
No. Track selection is included in the initial 16s load. IGN actually had a clarification about it. It takes a total of 16+14 = 30s to start racing, and it's not clear whether you can or cannot play Rally X while the loading takes place.
Click to expand...
Still too long though.

Handhelds shouldn't have loading at all. Turn it on, cruise through the menus and play. 30 seconds is a LOOOONG time. Times like these belong on PC or PS2, not something you want to play when taking a dump, or waiting for a bus
 
Matlock said:
Jesus. In the time that it takes to even start up Ridge Racers, I could start up and play a level's worth of Wario Ware touched. :-|
Click to expand...

Dunno about the DS game, but power on to actual gameplay in Wario Ware GBA takes about 11 seconds (if you jam buttons to get into the game as fast as possible)...

That's a lot shorter, but it isn't as if you just turn it on and start playing.
 
Hooker said:
Still too long though.

Handhelds shouldn't have loading at all. Turn it on, cruise through the menus and play. 30 seconds is a LOOOONG time. Times like these belong on PC or PS2, not something you want to play when taking a dump, or waiting for a bus
Click to expand...

Isn't a very big point completely being overlooked here or is it just me?

This initial load time is only when you first insert the game. They have an instant on/off feature that saves the system status, much like sleep mode on a laptop.

So, assuming you simply put the system to sleep as opposed to turning it off, you won't be having these initial load times.
 
Handhelds shouldn't have loading at all. Turn it on, cruise through the menus and play. 30 seconds is a LOOOONG time. Times like these belong on PC or PS2, not something you want to play when taking a dump, or waiting for a bus
Click to expand...
Once the game loads though, you can put the handheld in the sleep mode when you don't want to play it, and have it wake up instantly when you want to play it next time. Also, don't forget how may times you have to sit through those logo pictures at the beginning of GBA games, that you can't skip through? 'Load times' are not entirely a new concept, except on PSP at least they are justified :P
 
So it takes up memory which the game would no longer be able to use? That doesn't sound like a very good solution. Or does it completely release it from memory once it's taken out of sleep mode? I've never put my GBA or anything in sleep mode so I'm curious how it works exactly.
 
"So, assuming you simply put the system to sleep as opposed to turning it off, you won't be having these initial load times."

Definitely - but you have to assume that each track is going to have to load. Is that the 10 second time or the 14 second time or a different time all together.
 
The battery keeps feeding RAM with low current to keep it 'alive', and this spends next to nothing of battery power. There's no extra memory used. All PDAs do this all the time, btw.
 
"Once the game loads though, you can put the handheld in the sleep mode when you don't want to play it, and have it wake up instantly when you want to play it next time. Also, don't forget how may times you have to sit through those logo pictures at the beginning of GBA games, that you can't skip through? 'Load times' are not entirely a new concept, except on PSP at least they are justified :P"

again, depends what the load times are like per track and how often /long the game has to load between tracks.

Any news on Mingol? I just recall that IGN mentioned that the load times were longer. :(
 
DCharlie said:
"So, assuming you simply put the system to sleep as opposed to turning it off, you won't be having these initial load times."

Definitely - but you have to assume that each track is going to have to load. Is that the 10 second time or the 14 second time or a different time all together.
Click to expand...

True.

With a disc based system, we're going to have load times, so I expect that. They'll get better over time, but in the end, they are a fact of life with the PSP.
 
I think that with RR we are in front of the case were load times are gonna be worse. I don't think games such as Lumines, Vampire Savior will feature that kind of load times. Sure there will be games that have a similar load time to RR but the gameplay won't require to be constantly loading things.
 
What I would *really* like to know, is if it's really true that RR on PSP has to re-load the track again even if you want to just replay it right after you finished the race on it - and if so, why? I remember IGN said you have to wait for a reload of the same track when you play in the WiFi multiplayer mode, but what abot the single player mode. They also said that to view the replay of the race, there's no loading involved. So why would there be any loading if yo uwant to replay that same track?
 
GBA has a sleep mode as well, well, most games have it. And I don't use it at all.


Usually because you forget about it. Playing a game, the person who you were waiting for shows up. Can't save so you put it on the sleep mode. Next day you're wondering why your batteries are dead.

Sleep mode is a "fix" for something that shouldn't be a problem. Fact remains, handhelds shouldn't have loadtimes over 3 seconds. Then again, I don't think handhelds should go 3D either.

Reason why the GB-line sold so well was because nice graphics weren't possible on the machine, so games had to sell based on their gameplay. With 3D, and very good looking 3D at that, coming in the picture we'll going to have loads of games which look nice but play like shit
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Similar threads

PSP battery woes
13
238
R6Rider replied
Switch games loading slowly on microSD
26
2K
th4tguy replied
Switch 2 Loading Speed Test: SD Express vs. Internal Storage vs. Game Card
15
2K
readonly replied
'Loading Screens in Bethesda games are necessary' says former SKyrim Lead
News  2 3
126
2K
Three replied
Death Stranding 2's instantaneous loading times truly prove the power of the PS5
News Hardware  2
50
466
RetroGamingUK replied
Top Bottom