3 ms·

> the soft modded PSP's which load PS1 ISO's off a memory card are suuuuper cool. Which is what killed it. Why buy anything if modded version had "free" games,

by szszrk 2y ago

> the soft modded PSP's which load PS1 ISO's off a memory card are suuuuper cool. Which is what killed it. Why buy anything if modded version had "free" games, faster storage, better load times, capacity, battery life... Piracy went of the roof with PSP.

Woshiwuja 2y ago
[dead]
RajT88 2y ago
What killed it is all the games were watered down versions of console games. PSP games were really unsatisfying on average, for no obvious reason. I own one with a bunch of games, and tried (hard) to really scratch the gaming itch when I was traveling for work all the time with it. I gave up and started lugging an Xbox 360 with me sometimes... The game to date I've played most on PSP is the PS1 version of FF7 (which I bought from the Playstation store, fwiw). The DS had way more piracy and was a runaway success by all accounts. Consider this: Nintendo has a history of understanding what gamers really enjoy; Sony has a very inconsistent history of this. Read these two articles from the perspective of Sony selling ~83 million PSP's, and Nintendo selling ~154 million DS's: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_PlayStation_Portable_video_games https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_PlayStati... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_Nintendo_DS_video_games https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_Nintendo_... Getting back to my argument... If Microsoft could figure out how to make a profitable Xbox One portable at a 300-400 dollar price point, make it digital-only (maybe with some option to import a game off a disc from your console), they'd sell a gajillion units. My dream of a portable game console is playing Left4Dead for hours on end stuck in an airport. Still not doable - thanks to limited battery life of the Steamdeck-like portables.
- hot_gril 2y ago
  I'm shocked that Sony even sold more than half the number of PSPs as the number of DSes.
smileybarry 2y ago
What killed it was the UMD drive. Years after the PSP was discontinued, I read about a TIFF exploit and jailbroke my PSP. I ripped my copy of The Sims 2 from UMD to ISO and loading it from a normal Memory Stick made every loading screen 2 seconds instead of 2 minutes. (not exaggerating)
- ssl-3 2y ago
  Flash memory was still rather expensive at the time of the PSP's development and launch. A mass-produced UMD probably cost a dollar or three to produce and package and held up to ~1.8GB, whereas consumer flash was more than an order of magnitude more expensive[1] at that time. I mean: Sure, flash eventually became cheap-enough that it became a no-brainer for people like you and I to do whatever we felt like, but the PSP launched in March of 2005 when flash was still precious. (That said, I don't think I even know if the UMD drive on my PSP-2000 ever even worked. I bought it new along with a Memory Stick of a few GBs, immediately rooted it with a special battery[2], and ran old-school console emulators on it. I don't believe that I've ever used it with with a UMD.) [1]: https://www.jcmit.net/flashprice.htm https://www.jcmit.net/flashprice.htm [2]: "Special" battery as in, IIRC, it had a magic serial number that enabled some debugging tools that let the cat out of the bag.

by szszrk 2y ago

Woshiwuja 2y ago

[dead]

RajT88 2y ago

What killed it is all the games were watered down versions of console games. PSP games were really unsatisfying on average, for no obvious reason. I own one with a bunch of games, and tried (hard) to really scratch the gaming itch when I was traveling for work all the time with it. I gave up and started lugging an Xbox 360 with me sometimes... The game to date I've played most on PSP is the PS1 version of FF7 (which I bought from the Playstation store, fwiw). The DS had way more piracy and was a runaway success by all accounts. Consider this: Nintendo has a history of understanding what gamers really enjoy; Sony has a very inconsistent history of this. Read these two articles from the perspective of Sony selling ~83 million PSP's, and Nintendo selling ~154 million DS's: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_PlayStation_Portable_video_games https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_PlayStati... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_Nintendo_DS_video_games https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_Nintendo_... Getting back to my argument... If Microsoft could figure out how to make a profitable Xbox One portable at a 300-400 dollar price point, make it digital-only (maybe with some option to import a game off a disc from your console), they'd sell a gajillion units. My dream of a portable game console is playing Left4Dead for hours on end stuck in an airport. Still not doable - thanks to limited battery life of the Steamdeck-like portables.

hot_gril 2y ago
I'm shocked that Sony even sold more than half the number of PSPs as the number of DSes.

smileybarry 2y ago

What killed it was the UMD drive. Years after the PSP was discontinued, I read about a TIFF exploit and jailbroke my PSP. I ripped my copy of The Sims 2 from UMD to ISO and loading it from a normal Memory Stick made every loading screen 2 seconds instead of 2 minutes. (not exaggerating)

ssl-3 2y ago
Flash memory was still rather expensive at the time of the PSP's development and launch. A mass-produced UMD probably cost a dollar or three to produce and package and held up to ~1.8GB, whereas consumer flash was more than an order of magnitude more expensive[1] at that time. I mean: Sure, flash eventually became cheap-enough that it became a no-brainer for people like you and I to do whatever we felt like, but the PSP launched in March of 2005 when flash was still precious. (That said, I don't think I even know if the UMD drive on my PSP-2000 ever even worked. I bought it new along with a Memory Stick of a few GBs, immediately rooted it with a special battery[2], and ran old-school console emulators on it. I don't believe that I've ever used it with with a UMD.) [1]: https://www.jcmit.net/flashprice.htm https://www.jcmit.net/flashprice.htm [2]: "Special" battery as in, IIRC, it had a magic serial number that enabled some debugging tools that let the cat out of the bag.