2.5 more days till PSP
Not much time left before the PSP launch around here and the hype is flowing fast and furious today.
Most reviews I've seen look like they were written from a Sony press release, but the most insightful article I've read is by Mike Langberg at the Mercury News
Right now, the 10-ounce PSP will play movies, music and slideshows of your personal pictures. In the near future, the PSP could go online wirelessly for instant messaging, e-mail, Web browsing and even voice-over-the-Internet phone calls. Sony hopes to make a lot of money by setting up various toll booths that control access to all these activities. In recent years, Sony has blown several opportunities for greatness by placing excessive restrictions on how buyers can use its hardware. It's not yet clear if Sony will avoid repeating these mistakes.
It is clear this is Sony's game to lose, given the PSP's awesome strengths.
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If Sony makes the right choices, I foresee a flourishing ecosystem springing up around the PSP, including lots of UMD movies for sale and rental, external keyboards and microphones for instant messaging and Net phone calls, and more. Ultimately, PSP owners could spend more time with music, video and the Internet than playing games.
The PSP is going to be big, no doubt. But I think the question of whether it transcends gaming and becomes revolutionary depends on how open a platform Sony allows it to become.
For example, when I get my PSP on Thursday, I'm naturally going to want to record tv shows to watch during my two hours every day on a commuter train (essentially timeshifting/tivo).
Now, contrast the Old School method offered by Sony:
Starting next month, consumers in Japan will be able to buy a new version of the PSX, Sony's PlayStation 2/video recorder hybrid, which can record TV shows in the MPEG-4 format used by the PSP and load them onto a Memory Stick.
http://news.com.com/PSP+no+one-trick+pony+-+page+2/2100-1041_3-5626017-2.html?tag=st.next
With the modern day PSPCasting method:
There are tons of videos available for download from the internet. Unfortunately, nearly all of it is unplayable on the PSP. Wouldn't it be cool if you could automatically download, convert and copy these videos to your PSP for later playback? Well now you can.
Enter PSPcasting. Automatically downloading video files for viewing on a PSP at the your convenience.
http://www.pspvideo9.com/pspcasting.html
The question is will Sony encourage this sort of open, user-driven development (like what happened to the iPod), or will they try to squash this sort of active community and try to keep the reins on everything?
As a parting shot, I love the look of the PSP, but this case disturbs me:
Posted on Mon, 21 Mar 2005 15:37 by Seni Sangrujee (2289 day(s) old)
