PSP battery issues #934

Apparently its going to be down to the game developers now!

Can our good friend working on the devkit confirm or deny any of this?

 

3D graphics means more number crunching which means the CPU will get suck more electricity to compute those numbers.

I guess the PSP will have an average 5 hour battery life.

 

You can see Sony blaming the game developers though, they will claim they have got "5 million polygons a second tech demo running for 10 hours" when they really mean "5 pixels a second tech demo running for 10 minutes". On the game boxes, I can forsee the usual age ratings and content guides, and a battery useage section.

"Game X, age 12 and up, content includes rude words and low polygon tits (to attract little Jimmy Wanksalot), battery life 2 hours"

 

Kaz Hirai, President of SCEA, gave out some battery estimates earlier in the year. He spoke a few of times, the general quote is somewhere between 2.5-10 hours, although a few sources quoted him saying said that music would last for 10 hours, movies (with the UMD being in constant action) would last 2-2.5 hours, and games somewhere in between, he thought around 8 hours although it could vary depending on how well the game's coded. IGN have collected all the technical specs on their site:
http://psp.ign.com/articles/513/513175p1.html#tech
but don't give any further details about battery life.

 

Only giving 10 hours for music playback is pathetic. My MP3 player that uses CDs last well in to 20 hours. 2 hours for a movie is also far too short. There are many movies out there that last for well over 2 hours. Sony really have shot themselves in the foot regarding the battery life. How many developers do you know of who are going to be happy having to not only program a game to run well but now also having to worry about power drainage? Is this the first ever hand held where a programmer has been told to watch how much juice he's using? I'm not slagging Sony before anyone starts but you have to admit that this is looking like another "PS2 can launch a nuke it's that powerful" type of Bullshit.

Yakumo

 

Is it a removable rechargable battery or is it like GBA SP? Sega Nomad/Game Gear took an assload of batteries and lasted like 2 hours. If the pack is removable, I can see them releasing a $100 upgrade after its release.

 

Seems Sony are making the same mistake as Sega and Atari did with the GG/Lynx. Battery technology at the time simply wasn't able to power colour screen units for a reasonable amount of time. So Nintendo won that battle, even with a 'lesser' BnW machine. And evidently, current battery technology can't power a 3D handheld for very long. So the DS is looking like a good prospect ATM.

And if crazy matey who makes home machines portable (forget his name) is using camcorder batteries, and only gets something daft like 5hrs out of a PS or a NES, things really aren't looking good.

Seen a PSone or a GC battery pack? Big aren't they Fancy carrying something that size around with your PSP? No. Didn't think so.......

 

Well, I dont think the mainstay of the battery drainage comes down to the games being 3D or the CPU sucking power, but rather the UMD drive... bear in mind this is the first handheld that uses optical media and thus has moving parts. All previous consoles have used cartridges, which just require an utterly minimal voltage level to be maintained on several wires to read data from the cartridge whereas the UMD drive requires power to the motor to spin the disc and another motor to move the lens.

 

It's going to be down to how much the dev's can learn to effectively use the storage in the device so the UMD isn't going round all the time. I don't see how you could do that for fast free-roaming games like GTA where you're driving into new areas all the time.

 

Being abit more realistic how many of you plan to be away from a socket for moe then 8 hours an plan to play that much time away from anywhere to plug into? in your normal daily life...

 

what a shame, i can't believe that sony made a portable system with a variable power consumtion!
Imagine:
Our system has 10hours playing music (cpu at 2% max clock).
Our system has 2 hours displaying maximum polygons (100%).
Do you imagine that the dev studios will keep the 2% power to display something :-D ?
I suppose that all studios will use 50-90% of power just to make the best looking game possible (to sell more games) :smt071 .

I can't bear this!
In fact, for the best psp game, you'll get a crappier autonomy than a GG or Nomad with 1000mha batteries! :angry

 

I disagree that the battery life issue will be massive, are you guys forgetting the power of the Playstation brand both in the US and Japan and to a lesser extent Europe.

The brand will sell the console, after that it's anyone's guess but I will be happy with 2 hours, where I am going that 2 hours is not enough?If need be I'll get a strap on battery pack but I don't think I will need it, I'll just continue playing when I get in and recharge there as well.I never had a problem with the battery life of the GT, and game gear, did any of you.It was made a very big deal of in the press.The bottom line was the Gameboy had better games, that was all.

In fact I have been swithering on whether to get a PSP or DS at launch and having seen some of the absolute shite heading towards the DS, my mind is going more and more towards the PSP, I'm not overly bothered with battery besides I can charge it at work, or play it from the car charger in the car.Have any of you seen Konami's prince of tennis for the DS sorry to go OT but if this is what we can expect from Konami I am definetly going for the PSP.

Edited due to my keyboard being a peice of shit that does not pick up when hit.A word of warning, never buy a wireless keyboard.

 

Sorry if this sounds like a dig, but seeing as only a handfull of games have been showcased for the PSP, I can't see how anyone would seriously consider buying the thing until a greater lineup has actually made an appearance!

I have suffered the GG and Lynx battery issues firsthand. I travel every now and then for work, and sometimes spend up to a week at a time in hotels. When spending 3+ hours on the train, I dont want to be pulling out a batter pack 2x the size of the console for an extra hours useage.

To me the DS looks shit, but at least its shit with a strong lineup of games!

 

And what DS games have been shown, hmmm. Mario 64 (admittelly an awesome prospect if the textures improve and it is playable with a d pad),Metroid( ok but I haven't seen evidence of anything other than a death match), Pictochat..WTF, Pacpix....novelty at best, I will die for you...innaccessible to the english, and that's it really oh and prince of tennis which looks shit.The rest is all on paper and we know how many games were announced for the 64DD.The games shown for PSP look hugely impressive in motion, bettering anything I have seen n DS which looks Psone texture quality at best.The two screen idea is proving little more than a gimmick which no one can be arsed to develop for.I want DS to work and succeed but everything I have seen so far is pointing to failure and it all seems like a VERY bad idea now.

 

I agree, the DS graphics can't compare to the PSP, but who said it had to?

Mario 64x4 looks as shit as DS games are going to get, terrible draw distance, and low quality textures. I never said the DS was going to be any good! :smt042

In all seriousness though, what little games have been shown for the PSP (real graphics that is), there's little to justify putting any money down for one.

 

I love you, Gameboy Advance SP, with your 18-hour battery life, crisp color screen, and readily available library of tons of GBA games, plus hundreds if not thousands of GBC and GB games as well.

As far as the battery life issue goes, of the people I know who own Gameboys or other portable gaming machines, very few of them use the machines for LESS than an hour or two on a sitting, as they really get taken on long car and bus trips. If battery life is even 5 hours average for games, that's going to be a huge problem.

Anyone hear anything about the DS battery life specs?

 

Wonderswan Color gets ~15 hours on 1 AA, SwanCrystal gets ~20!

 

No, more like 4-6.

 

You're right. It could in fact boost sales of the PSP cuz people will think that if a game developer has to watchout on battery usage then that means the game must look bad-ass. Thus they buy it.

 

Remember when people used to choose games by how many megabits they had, back in the 16 bit era? Maybe this is how games are gonna be chosen in the near future: in the cover of the new generic Madden/NBA/Fifa game for PSP it will show "This game can only be played for 2 hours per full battery", and the c00l h4xx0r kid will choose that game because "if it consumes a lot of power, then it has wtfomgbbq graphics, and graphics r0xx0r"