Portable market competition

[AlphaWolf]

Nintendo lost dominance in the console market to sony....will they lose dominance in the portable market to sony as well?

http://games.slashdot.org/games/03/05/13/2116257.shtml?tid=207&tid=127&tid=186

You already know what I think.

 

[DuDe]

The thing is, that Nintendo already controls the handheld market, and unless Sony's new system would be something really special, I don't see them taking the lead in the handheld market.

 

[Gorxon]

Well, like Tagrineth mentioned, think about it's battery drain...they would need some magic batteries to power that think more than 4-5 hours...which is totally unacceptable (hey, it's supposed to be a portable )

Other than that, I dunno....I think it will sell a great deal, but it going on 3D I hate...i very much prefer the SNES like 2D games that the GBA has....

 

[AlphaWolf]

Well, like Tagrineth mentioned, think about it's battery drain...they would need some magic batteries to power that think more than 4-5 hours...which is totally unacceptable (hey, it's supposed to be a portable )

I wouldn't say that. If they took 3d hardware thats even half as powerful as a geforce 4 (which would be more than plenty for a portable), they could get tons of battery life on it (recent innovations in the laptop gaming market have realy improved the hell out of this over the last 6 months). The biggest power drain would be powering the moving parts and the laser for the disc reader.

Mind you that nintendo had an iron grip over the console market. It took a few years, but sony slipped it away from them.

 

[MECCA]

specs can be found here:

http://ps2.ign.com/articles/402/402220p1.html

 

[Wildman55]

specs can be found here:

http://ps2.ign.com/articles/402/402220p1.html

-USB 2.0 connection for talking to your PC, cellphone, even your PS2
-Rechargeable battery
-The unit's sound processing will feature full 3D sound, PCM, and will be "fully reconfigurable."
-Supports additional video codecs (other than MPEG 4.)

It's options like the above that have the ability to dominate teh GBA, plus the graphics will probably be quite noticeably better. However, good specs does not mark the success of a system, as we've seen with the Atari Jaguar ("yeah we've got the first 64-bit processor! I mean uh, dual 32-bit processors...yeah...") and the Xbox (which is just now beginning to have some moderate success after all this time). Obviously it's the games man...and that will be a tough fight because the entire handheld market is Gameboy for the most part, with the exception of the new mobile phone games.

 

[Tagrineth]

I wouldn't say that. If they took 3d hardware thats even half as powerful as a geforce 4 (which would be more than plenty for a portable), they could get tons of battery life on it (recent innovations in the laptop gaming market have realy improved the hell out of this over the last 6 months). The biggest power drain would be powering the moving parts and the laser for the disc reader.

Wrong.

GBA draws about 0.6 Watts total, and lasts ~12-14 hours on a pair of AA's.

Now, if you look at Laptop gaming... PLEASE CONSIDER THE SIZE AND WEIGHT of a Laptop battery. Totally unacceptable for a handheld console, and a whole laptop generally lasts ~3-4 hours running the full thing, even with power saving on the CPU, vid chip, etc.


Beyond3D's forum has an in-depth discussion (7 pages) on PSP, I recommend you all read it. (it's in Console Talk)


Added: Oh and please note, that power != victory, not in home consoles, and definitely not in handhelds. The Game Boy line has slaughtered many handhelds much more powerful than it (NEC TurboExpress, Atari Lynx, and Sega's GameGear and Nomad).

 

[AlphaWolf]

Now, if you look at Laptop gaming... PLEASE CONSIDER THE SIZE AND WEIGHT of a Laptop battery. Totally unacceptable for a handheld console, and a whole laptop generally lasts ~3-4 hours running the full thing, even with power saving on the CPU, vid chip, etc.

Thats just the thing though, they don't have to use modern shit. I guarentee you that they could suqeeze a lot of shit out of TNT or geforce era equivalent graphics hardware with very very little power consumption.