I hope it isn't removed. Like Sick said I hope maybe a higher quality UMD. As long as they allow backwards compatability between the systems.

I have no clue when this is supposed to come out, but I'm still holding onto hope for a NA release of Birth By Sleep.

I referring to the UMD battery sucking part. Is it true?

guys, can u remember when dvd was released? it was a leap from cd, but now, it's freaking small (in capacity)



if they're gonna invent blu-umd (you name it), it'll be old in ~3 years.



Do the math:

9gb (normal dl-dvd) / 1.8gb (umd) = 5gb

50gb (normal dl-blu-ray) / 5gb = 10gb (blu-umd)



(hmm, actually, 10gigs is very large for a 333mhz cpu 32mb ram 480x272 system)

apparently his source isn't credible. I mean hye claims Sony isn't going to make a profit on the PS3, yet they're very close, probably around middle to late march will start making profit. The reason why PS3 isn't going to be cut in price, is cause they're not making profit with each console sold. When they do hit that, i'm sure the price cut will definitely follow.



Anyway enough of the offtopic chatter, It's not out of the unrealistic if Sony finds a way to have mini-blu-ray on the PSP2. But it's awhile before we get the next edition.

Great comparison drawn.



NOT!

it is a dumb idea to sell read only memory sticks and here are the following reason why and note this is only my opinion:



-They are small and easily lost.

-They cost a lot of money for them to make compared to a UMD. Even a 32mb memory stick costs more than a UMD.

-This costs increases as the size of the memory stick goes up.

-All existing games needs to be ported to a memory stick format to ensure backwards compatability.

-DRM would be easily cracked compared to ripping a UMD.

-This would have been done if they really wanted to since the DS currently is using this method. The reason why Sony went with UMD is because it is cheap to produce and has a much bigger memory capacity. Do you really want your PSP games to have the depth of a DS game?

it is a lot easier to download and play games on an ipod, than a psp. They may not be great, but it is easy to get it. I wish all new psp games had a download option for purchases too.

"-This would have been done if they really wanted to since the DS currently is using this method. The reason why Sony went with UMD is because it is cheap to produce and has a much bigger memory capacity. Do you really want your PSP games to have the depth of a DS game?"



Last time i checked, 2+ gigs is a lot bigger than 1.8 gigs.

no UMD drive means they will have great demand from the consumer to have all their games downloadable from the store... That is only half the battle, as they will have to close in on the pirates and torrent sites if they want to sell digitally... which they have failed this task at every turn. So either they have a plan, or they've just freakin lost it.!!

and i guess we knew that already so i'm just stating the obvious... lol

orly?

i know how to read +)

"and that all current PSP titles will show up on PSN (calm your fears for backwards compatibility)."



How the hell does that let me play the 45 games I already own? Complete bull. It NEEDS UMD.

If you think about it, 100% digital is not a bad option at all.



Flash memory costs have gone down by a heavy amount since the introduction of the first PSP (whilst capacity is reaching new heights!), it's certainly not unfeasible to have 32 gig of onboard memory and one or even two expansion slots replacing the UMD on launch of the PSP2.



For sure backwards compatibility might be an issue for those with large collections, but what if SONY can just release a software package for your PC/MAC that allows you to dump the UMDs you have to a pre-defined and key encoded format via the existing USB interface for transfer onto your new PSP? The brew community has already shown that dumping UMDs to readable image files is a no brainer, there's absolutely no reason why Sony can't incorporate this with something akin to the Apple's IPOD software interface for managing IPOD content.



Viola! No redundant UMD format required!



As for 'the community not ready for digital' I think people need to step out of the stone age and get a grip on reality for a moment. The Apple online store for IPOD & STEAM for the online gaming community both prove already beyond any doubt that it's more than ready.



I think the fear mongers among you all need to stop and get a *****ing reality check. Removable optical media is a significant restraint on the overall system capability in terms of functionality, design, power consumption and practicality (who actually WANTS to cart around 40 odd *****ing UMDs with their portable gaming unit?).



If Sony drop it in favour of going 100% digital, it'll be the next obvious step in evolution for portable gaming systems because sure as hell the likes of Nintendo will be looking at this as the obvious next step...

I think you're speaking from personal bias right there rather than a practical look at the situation. Having media delivered by electronic means has a whole new level of convenience and what's more, once you have purchased it online, you can continue to download it to your system indefinitely as the parent server retains your purchase information. If someone breaks into your house and steals your precious UMD collection, you sir are screwed. If you buy through steam, get another unit - redownload. Problem solved.



Look at my post below. Your fears of the industry being hurt by going digital are already unfounded and proven to be false. Apple IStore? Steam? Any of those ring a bell at all?



You need to get with the times and realise that just because a small minority have more faith in monetary value through physical media in hand, the majority of people out there really don't give a ***** and will happily purchase digital formats over these older methods.



Of course they might lose a few die-hards like yourself in doing this, but you already admit they'll save a wad of cash in production, packaging and shelf space so why are they going to care?

This is good and hopefully it does not collect dust in the feature like mine.





Sony really need to revamp the protable, maybe this one will play PS2 games? lol that would rock!







Hopefully this time they put like 256MB of flash and a SD card.

As pointed out by neko it is 2 gigabits not bytes. Bits for some odd reason is how we measure internet usage. But i dunno who used it for the DS. If its nintendo obviously they just wanted to inflate the number and make it seem bigger. Probably why they use bits for internet speed as well.

i smell a fail. lets be honest most people have atleast a computer. but not all fully trust putting credit card information online. with all the hackers and virus's these days who can blame them. if the psp2 will make every game digtial i see sony losing alot of sells on the portable side. ps3 already has lost alot of sells then sony projected. they lost close to 2 billion dollars last year and they go and do this........ wow

He just wants attention...



I could be wrong... time will only tell.

Right, because you NEED TO BUY ONE AND GET RID OF THE OLD ONE.



Get serious.

hikashooooo



mr poker poker made a joke and i lol'd

well if sony is going to sell games directly playable from memory stick...thn i don't the idea cz just by incase what if it got accidently gets deleted?

Hopefully they do take the umd drive OFF!!! put heka more RAM FLASH and internal memory. And be able to download games from the ps store. GREAT NO UMD DRIVE!!!!!!!YEA AAAAAAAAAAA!!!! !!!!!

clever..

DVD's were meant to replace VHS tapes not CD's

mobile phone software hardly reaches 1.8GB

digital would suck

you'de need a blazing fast connection to get it in a timely fashion

whereas i go to games r us, buy a UMD and HEY it plays straight away

how is it now we have faster loading,more battery life,and no crap tht can come out of the UMD case (i mean by the case holding the UMD breaking).Plus we get more memory 4 better graphics,longer gameplay,and more added features if the game desiners arn't lazy.Also if u have a psp y do u need bc u already have the psp so u can just play it on there.Pls no flame wars w/me i see how u ppl get when u get mad. :(

Where did you get your numbers from last time i checked the capacity of a ds card was 1 GIGABYTE not 2 gigabits not 256 mb it was 1 GIG

Correct me if I'm wrong, but is ASH (Archaic Sealed Heat) not the only DS title released so far on a 2 gigabit card? And, to date, is that not the largest game created for the system? I think even Chrono Trigger, with all of those FMV sequences, was only 1 gigabit (128 megs), and it included both languages in the same cart. The same is true for Final Fantasy IV. There's no need to be rude, Punty, just learn something new and evolve.

"(...) this will kill the used game market (...)"

i think we can all agree that game companies consider buying games second-hand a threat to their profits.



i'm worried that the day that buying used games will become illegal will come quicker than expected. this is really getting ridiculous. most of my games are bought second-hand, and i definitely would not affort most of them if i bought them normally.



"They [sony?] never relased a tool to convert your PS1 games to work on the PSP"



in the context of killing the used game market this is only natural - they want to charge you as many times as possible for the same game. from the other hand, they would have no way to check whether the ps1 game you are converting from is original (unless it would be done on ps3).



i believe that sony will eventually release some ps2 games on psn for ps3. but you can bet that you won't be able to convert your existing games - they'll want to milk out as much money as they can from you.

lets face it the psp movies suck like hell if your psp was imported.



sony can do a number of things here for usa psp owners that will work for all.



people who owned the old psp can register the games that they still owned and sony can give people a download code to download the games they already owned so as not to pay for it again. cause i agree with people i don't want to buy games for the old psp just to have to buy it again in another format. doing it this way will give people more of a reason to buy the new game instead of downloading it and playing it for free it will be more worth my money this way.



sony can use SSD hard drives instead of memory sticks for the games and movies.

How can this be possible, if Sony is investing huge amounts of money in big games for the PSP this year (LittleBigPlane t, Motorstorm, Assassin's Creed).

Why would anyone make huge new games, only a few months before a new console is out! (fall 2009 - PSP2)



Some people say 2009 is the year of the PSP!



I think 2009 is the PSPs resurrection!



Might as well be the insurrection of the PSP vs PSP2!



What do you guys think!

The whole thing about the PSP2 seem so cool to me I mean if they use the same method they use to make the PS3 and make is more compatible with the PS3 then that would be damn cool and besides we need something more advanced and exciting so what if they lose the UMD drive....farewell.....I all for it and they will get my money just like when the PS3 came out......something new thats what we need cause the PSP has gotten boring!!!!!

Its gigaBITS. DS games have always been using a 1 gigaBIT card as the biggest until recently where bigger games needed more memory. Therefore the 2 gigaBIT card was introduced. It is rarely used because the more memory it has the slower it is. Therefore as a further argument the bigger the game is the slower it will load. Though a 2 gig card would probably load faster than a UMD though. This is assuming they use quality cards. Obviously if they use read only memory sticks it would be made extremely cheap and probably still load at the speed of a UMD. Though the upside is that it wont suck the battery life out of your PSP.

But like someone else said I hope there's some way format shifting or otherwise of playing your UMD titles. Even if they released an external drive that let you copy one UMD at a time into the flash memory of your PSP2. I mean what do they care anyway if they're walking away from UMD sales.

What if your unit breaks/gets stolen in 10 years?

There's no way Sony will keep the servers online for that long.

Why is used games such a big issue anyway?

Are they worried retro games will live too long or what?



People buy and sell suff, DEAL WITH IT!

and for god's sakes stop talking about APPLE.. They are not a game company no matter how hard they try.



Sony will never give you a way to dump your UMDs.. that's what homebrew is for.



My original statement is that we (the consumers) will not benefit from the elimination of disc (and cart) based media. We will not see any type of savings passed onto us and they would essentially be killing off the used game and rental markets... forcing customers to pay full price even after the game has been out for many years. Taking software out of brick + mortar stores is a very bad idea. No more clearance prices.. They will have no pressure on "sensible" pricing.



Not to mention there is still quite a few people using dial-up. How in the hell would they deliver PS3 games that utilize an entire Blu-Ray disc? I have a couple ideas and I don't care for them. 1. Waiting 6-8 hours for it to download and fill up your hdd and 2. Cutting out content and offering it for more money at a future time. 3. Compression and not the lossy type.....



It seems that many people don't even realize we are going in reverse in terms of audio and video quality, and much of that has to do directly with digital delivery. We went from cassette tapes, to CD's, to MP3.. That was a step back since the CD quality is compressed and audio that they believe most people will not miss is lopped off!, but that's the price we are paying to have files digitally deliverable.



I don't want to see the same fate happen to video games. I love the PS3's uncompressed 7.1 audio and amazing textures. To go in reverse with quality to cater to digital delivery would be a crime!



I also disagree with your statement



"a small minority have more faith in monetary value through physical media in hand, the majority of people out there really don't give a ***** and will happily purchase digital formats over these older methods."



I know a lot of gamers that would never consider buying a $60 digital game. Virtual Console and other $10 games here and there are a different story. I believe the majority of people paying full price for a game want to have the disc, box, manual. I also like to see the deluxe sets with extra incentives. You just won't get that with digital delivery.



I see digital-only content as a lease rather than owning. Do you really think you will have all those games in 10-20 years.. long after the servers shut down and your hdd gets corrupted? Is that a chance you want to take?



OK, I rambled quite a bit there, but I think many other gamers share my feelings.

"Some people will sell their old PSP to pay for the new one."



Are you serious? That justifies your complaining?



You seriously think someone is going to be retarded enough to sell an old UMD'd PSP to buy a new UMDless PSP, only to THEN find out it won't play UMDs?

Blu-UMD's or BMD's would be this shizknit!



They need to stroungly concider using the

new Atom processor with the PSP2 at 1.6Ghtz

instead of old 333Mhtz tech.