News Sony launching PSP Phone?

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardware/2010/08/13/sony-launching-psp-phone/1

 

I still want a decent Android phone with a qwerty keyboard...

 

Let the PSP die already.

 

Or if you want to play ps1 games now you could just download the psx emulator from the andriod market place

 

Love the idea. Hope the make it better then Nokia with that failure called N-Gage /facepalm

 

While I think gaming on Android does need a push in the right direction from a large company like Sony, I fear they will find a way to make it unhackable again and that is the only reason I had for giving up my PSP.

 

Damn it, now do I upgrade my G1 when my contract is up in September to a Samsung Galaxy S (or HTC Desire HD if it's out) or do I wait for this...

 

So, they are doing what they should have done two years ago, making the PSP GO a touch screen phone that could play PS games? They are getting really behind.

 

You guys missed a really important part of the article for me.

I'm just going to repost exactly what I said on the Guardian Gamesblog this morning (bit-tech is blocked in work):

Lose the touchpad, get a real joystick and we'll talk. Touchpads do not work for game controls. Ever tried playing games on an iPhone/iPod touch? You need the physical sensation of actually moving something; without this, it's very hard to know how far and in which direction you're "moving the controller".

Other than that, it looks like an interesting platform. Although they will have to do some wizardry with the OS/hardware to keep game performance up; perhaps something like a hypervisor or virtual machines, if the hardware is even capable of that. I know they're talking about a 1GHz processor and the PSP only has 333MHz, but the OS will doubtless eat a big chunk of that - especially if they keep standard Android features, such as background sync, push mail, widgets, etc. If they don't keep that stuff, it won't be a very good Android phone.

 

They may well put one of the new ARM dual-core CPUs in and the sheer fact that they're talking about launching proper 3D titles such as CoD4 it's gonna have to be pretty snappy!

 

Difficult to say how much power it will need. The article reckons that it's as powerful as the original PSP, and that only has a 333MHz CPU. In fact, it doesn't even utilise that fully: most games only run at 222MHz, with very few pushing this to 266MHz. Although that's probably a pretty specialised chip, solely designed for playing games - not a general purpose CPU, like an ARM chip. The phone's CPU will need to be beefy to try and do the emulation or code-wrapping needed. Having said that, I can run Android 2.2. on my 3-year old HTC Kaiser, and that only has a 400MHz ARM chip. Android 3.0 may not need that full 1GHz - perhaps background stuff can be disabled when PSP games are being played.

This will be one to keep an eye on though.

 

Interesting, though i'm really not sold on the concept of merging a mobile phone and game console together.

If you happen to need a phone upgrade at the exact same time you want a new console thats great. If you don't need a new phone the integrated phone is suddenly a huge inconvenience, potentially bumping up the price of the unit as well.
also battery life: mobiles are great for short bursts of game playing, but they are already severely limited by the battery. Playing a long game while out and about has the potential to take out your phone as well if the battery runs out.

As for the PSP go, it's a frustrating thing: has potential, but let down by being vastly overpriced and having atrocious download options for a downloadable-content-only device*

*seriously Sony, if you're making a console with no removable media support, getting EVERY release available for download on release day needs to be your biggest priority

 

I think it's a great idea. I can get any phone I want on my contract, and I don't own any portable games console. I would never take 2 separate devices with me, so I really like the idea of having both in the same box. At the moment I use an iPhone, but the games aren't that great. I looked at the android phones and the games on that are perhaps even worse. So if I could get a PSP with all the games on that, but it was a phone too, then that would be high on my list. It would have to play films and music as well as an iPhone does though, and it would have to have a browser and email and proper contacts list and stuff too. If it had all that though, I could say bye to Apple.

 

A PSP Go combined with a Droid phone will finally level the playing field against the iphone if the price is right. hope the stuff it with a dual core Arm Cpu.

They have to keep all the Droid features and PSP Go features to make it worth it. No short cutting please. This could really be a huge product for Sony and breath new life into PSP sales. I like it so far.

PSP go Phone and the Asus 121 eee pad has me excited about portable electronics.