PSPGo will die if games don't get cheaper

I'd have to think that they are reaching out to those who use iso loaders and such for the actual convenience of being able to redownload/delete on a whim and not having the possibility of damaging their physical media and loosing out completely.

^^ there is such a market as not everyone is out to steal or get something free.

 

Heh, I used minidisc until 2005...maybe 2006. Whenever my last player stopped working and I said "...maybe it's time to get an iPod..."

 

I can't wait until the PSPGo dies (well, assuming it will) so I can stop hearing people argue about it.

I, too, still have my MiniDisc player. I was recently thinking about getting a proper MD recorder but wasn't sure if it would actually be significantly cheaper than a regular digital handheld thing just because it's obscure and obsolete.
I remember thinking to myself, "Man, they need to make a handheld that uses MiniDiscs..." - I had a pretty big attraction to my MD players and feel the same about my PSP simply out of a similarity rather than the actual games and functionality. Like bonus points.

 

Oh yeah, definitely not disputing the usefulness of the Minidisc. For those who bought it, it was a fantastic product. The same could be said about all the rest of Sony's failed formats. Personally, I used Minidisc as a budget digital recorder for recording concerts and stuff in high school. (http://plotcircles.com/amescreative/images/spec_ad2_minidisc.jpg) But it definitely failed to reach the ubiquity Sony wanted. They were marketing it to a consumer audience (http://farm1.static.flickr.com/126/417813466_5bc4b53a12.jpg) at a time when that audience wanted CDs. Besides, ATRAC1 was fairly low-quality at typical long-play bitrates until Sharp and Panasonic reimplemented it for their own, generally superior, Minidisc recorders.

 

Atrac, for shame

 

They still make the PSPgo?
lol

This is the first I have seen or heard since launch.

 

I though that was a train controlling protocol.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Compact_Cassette

"Pitched as a successor to the standard analog cassette, and competitor to MiniDisc (MD) and Digital Audio Tape (DAT), it never became popular with the general public" ... "DCC signalled the parting of ways of Philips and Sony, who had worked together successfully on the Compact Disc, CD-ROM and CD-i before."

CD-i a success? This Wikipedia entry must have been written from a parallel dimension...

 

Oh, I should point out that mine was a Sharp recorder MD player. Wouldn't buy a Sony one even if they did invent the format :110: Great format but their units were shit compared to Sharp and panasonic.

 

Gah, I really wanted a Pana, but could only afford the bottom-of-the-line Sony recorder (not even a line-in! Bummer!) to replace my even older, preowned (albeit dirt cheap) Sony non-recorder.

 

...or, nice of you to make one prediction that other Earthlings would come up with.

 

PSP Go is, at least on paper, a great idea. The UMD format has hobbled the PSP since day one: discs will never be as convenient as cartridges, and the portable movie market Sony believed would be just as big a selling point as the games ended up imploding rather spectacularly. (When you consider Sony's track record with media formats, Blu-Ray's success - however relative - is a one-off fluke.)

The bottom line is, the PSP could never have reached its potential if it weren't for the possibility of downloading content. The PSN Store is literally the system's saving grace: I've bought more PSP software through the Store these past six months than I've bought UMDs in two whole years.

But the devil is in the details. I haven't bought a single game for PSP through the PSN Store that cost more than $20, and I hesitate to buy anything over $10. When I found out that the download version of Persona would cost $40 even though it didn't come with the soundtrack, that pretty much did it for me.

From what I understand, Sony is playing a delicate game with the retailers: they hate the Go, they hate the PSN Store, and they hate DD, for obvious reasons. Unfortunately, Sony can't sell the Go or all the delicious things that facilitate DD (PSN Cards, anyone?) without the retailers' cooperation, so they do their best to make DD just attractive enough that the rich idiots who leapt on the Go like a pack of rabid jaguars would buy DD without hesitation but drive the average Joe to stick with UMD: that way, the retailers are satisfied that their sales won't be impacted if they agree to carry Sony's little digital Antichrist.

So yeah, the Go won't work, because we live in a world where convenience gets a kick in the balls if it conflicts with profitability. It drives me nuts that PSP games released on the Store cost exactly the same as their retail counterparts - I had such high hopes after Holy Invasion of Privacy, Badman! switched to download-only and got a $10 price cut in the process - and this coupled with Sony's questionable ability to get new software out on the PSN Store means that if some well-meaning individual gives me a Go for Christmas, I will do my best to politely ask for my gift receipt, then turn around and trade it in for a 16GB Memory Stick and a brand-new PSP-3000.

 

One important thing about PSPGo is also that the parents won't buy it for their kids as they can't buy anything for it as present and second that you need a good internet connection which face it it's mostly in Europe. So Australia, NZ and country of USA are off the market. And Europe to as people here are smarter and steal more shit then the others

 

Sony cannot drop the price very much below retail UMD or they will upset retailers. Then who is going to stock their machines and disc format games?

Apple does not have this problem - they don't sell discs. They were clever because they made the iPod hard to obtain originally then slowly expanded the retailers they sold to. Now everyone wants to sell the iPod and Apple don't have to please anyone but themselves.

 

I think the solution is obvious: dump the UMD already! The point about retailers is a good one when you think about any possible DL-only system, though.

 

or make DL stations at shops, offering slightly better prices in-shop by paying over the counter

 

It takes quite some time to download a full game though.. Not to mention memory cards filling up etc. It would have to be combined with an account system and would also have to be accessible from home if you wanted another game that you own but isn't currently on your hdd/memory stick. Then think about downloading a 2gb game if you have a crappy connection..

Too many cons.

 

DL stations usually contain the games they offer, they're not "online" (except maybe in service/catalogue update mode).

There have been workable business models of video game vending machines of such type, FDS comes to mind.

 

Yes, but we're talking much more GB's here.. I think a normal 2GB PSP game will still take atleast 2 minutes to write to a memory card?