PSP worth it?

S

Sculli

Guest
The X360 worth it? thread resulted in some good responses. What about the PSP? I am mainly curious about two things, battery life, and display quality in a daylight environment. Then there is the issue of games of course. Thoughts?
 
Personally, I'd recommend going for a DS first, but you might want to wait for the U.S. release of the DS Lite. The original DS isn't exactly crap, but the updated capabilities of the Lite makes it at least five times better.

The PSP boasts the capability of FMV cutscenes, and a specialized video format. Still, though, the things that have always helped Nintendo survive win out in this case (at least for me):

1) Load times, blech. A five-second FMV isn't worth 15 more seconds loading. You won't get them on the DS.

2) Too much of a focus on stupid, licensed sports titles. The DS is newer, and has less games, but some very, very good titles.

3) The DS's WiFi capability is very nice; it'll work with nearly any wireless router.

4) Innovation. The PSP is basically a souped-up, shrunk playstation. The sheer novelty factor of the DS's touch screen is actually a long time in wearing off.

5) Less of a chance of "dead pixels" on the DS, due to differences in screen resolution and complexity, and ... well, let's be honest here: quality control. Sony is notoriously bad at it.

5) Finally, price. ^_^


I was torn between a DS and a PSP myself, but I just got a DS a few months ago. I love it. PSP is next, but I'm glad I didn't get it first.
 
My PSP kicks my girlfriend's DS's ass if I leave them in the same room together. PSP holds my viedeos and music and the battery life cna run from 2-6 hours depending on what you are doing. The DS kinda looks like a little tank to me, and very few of its games make proper use of the dual screen.
 
I own both, and I'm not sure I can say the PSP is "worth it." I haven't played any games on it in months and tend to use it more for watching videos. The battery life isn't bad, though. If I had it to do over again, I would've waited for a price drop.
 
My little brother got a PSP awhile back. I can't say much about the DS cause i never tried it before ( deep down inside i want one)


PSP
- PSP screen. LCD wide screen, although the handheld is small, the screen provides a rather large visual. Sitting on you're coutch and holding the PSP between you and the TV you'll notice due to depth preception the PSP has a larger screen than the TV. Never tried it in bright daylight before it's be ok viewing i think, but i imagine it wouldn't be a good idea for direct sun light to refract off the screen.

- Built in Battary, i would say would last you about 5-6 hours. If you can maintain a cell phone, then the PSP is not a problem, Even play it while plugged into the charger.

- Movies. Not all of the DVDs but alot of the new releases are made for PSP too. Don't know if you can rent them anywhere, The PSP comes with Spiderman II

- MP3 playback

-File Storage. Availible seperatly you can get a memory stick that can store 2 gigs of anything you give it. jpeg mpeg whatever. I don't remember how much space the stock memory stick can hold.

-Games. Depends on what you like. If you're not a big time gamer, then you probably won't play on the PSP very much. The Games are awsome though.

- Emulation. You do have the option to join the darkside and have old gaming consols like SNES emulated for memory stick playback. Nuff said. ( ' ' )

-Wireless internet browser capabilities. Personally i don't know if there are any online games for PSP, but i have browsed the internet on it. (it's slow and runs out of memory very fast.

*Loading time isn't like the commadore 64 days or anything. Gran Theft Auto is the most loading time i have seen on the PSP so far, and the worlds are massive.

*When not looked at as an entertainment toy, PSP is a nice tool for carrying any kind of videos, pictures of family, or music you would like to show off at any given time. It's USB compatable, with the USB cable that comes with it.

DS i hear is very cool, and from researching it, the DS has some really cleverly designed games. Because of how it works, i would say the DS is capable of having games that are a finer playing experience. DS has the touch screen, the microphone, and the D-pad, where as the PSP has the D-Pad and the Analog thumb.
 
Bigboy said:
My PSP kicks my girlfriend's DS's ass if I leave them in the same room together. PSP holds my viedeos and music and the battery life cna run from 2-6 hours depending on what you are doing. The DS kinda looks like a little tank to me, and very few of its games make proper use of the dual screen.
Click to expand...
The battery life of the DS is 10 hours, and it's brighter. The DS Lite's battery life can stretch into excess of 17 - 20 hours, at the lowest brightness setting ... which is more visible and brighter than the original DS, which was more bright than the PSP in the first place. The lack of a need to power a disc-reading laser makes things more efficient.

At any rate, a game that doesn't make "proper" use of the dual screens probably isn't really a title worth buying. What games are you referring to, exactly? What games does your girlfriend have?

Tank, yes, I'll give you that ... but it's also sturdier; not nearly so easy to break. The PSP can be sensitive to rougher treatment. The touch screen on the DS is kind of susceptible to scratching, but only if you're an asshat with the stylus.






Onto a more generic comparison between the two systems, and why I'd go DS first:

The PSP's capabilities to hold emulators and other bits of software is its greatest strength, in my opinion. I'd hate to watch a movie I cared about on that dinky little screen, and any "novelty" short-length videos you kept on it can only get old very fast. What's more, music playback is something taken care of by much better, more specialized pieces of technology; when it comes to listening to music on the road, the last place I want to turn to in order to do so is a clunky-ass portable game system, be it PSP or DS. I've read that loading MP3s onto a PSP is a miserable process, as well.

Once again, the extras are nice, but I buy a game system to be a damn game system. That's where it loses. Your best bet of getting a solid lineup of good games for the PSP is to put emulators on it for other, older systems. This is, actually, the thing I most wanted a PSP for.

One of the most prolific criticisms of the PSP is that most of the titles available for it just suck. As it can really be argued that this was the "primary function" that the gadget was built for in the first place, and all the bells and whistles were simply selling points, that's sad. The DS Lite is literally thrashing the PSP in Japan, right now.

The titles available for the DS are its greatest strength (followed closely by the WiFi multiplayer feature). They're fun, and innovative. What's more, there is full backwards compatibility with all Game Boy Advance games, as well. It has more games (counting the GBA lineup), and more of them are decent. It wins in that department. That's all I'm saying.

I do plan on eventually owning both, but mainly to get at that ability to put one's own software on it. This is, in my opinion, the only "extra" that makes a PSP "worth it" on its own steam, and you've got to tinker with the unit's software to enable that capability, besides. I really hope that the quality of the PSP lineup improves before I buy.


At the very least, one might consider that you'll neve be playing The Legend of Zelda: The Phantom Hourglass on your PSP. o_O
 
Last edited:
I'd hate to tell you this Anttaru but....the days of having the emulator on the psp are over since they keep patching it with each software update that is realeased on each new game.

1st of all....the DS has way more games, and most are many times over more ingenious and addicting.

2nd the DS does have this horrible habit of not taking advantage of the dual screen system, not to mention the touch screen can get horribly scratched if not takin care of. While the psp now offers replaceable face plates.

3rd Alot of the psp games are poor port overs. Plus alot of the better games, especially ones using the analog stick, have the tendency to...need a 2nd stick lol. Infection is uber hard to play with 1 stick and not to mention one of my fave games doesn't even support the stick which by all means it NEEDS. Darkstalker Chronicles 4tw and loss.

Oh and 1 last thing........just like in lord of the rings...1 ring to rule them all and 1 ring to bind them w/e the words were again.......1 word Luminous

That game officially owns my handold gaming part of my soul...Tetris and Meteos have nothing on it.... It's the sole reason I got my psp and that game alone was worth every penny.
 
was going to buy a psp yesterday had the £124 in my pocket looked at the psp games and they are crap really crap at least with DS (what i have) you can get metriod etc and with WIFI it owns!!!
 
^^; I do agree with you on pretty much everything Wink. The DS has way better games. But since as we all seem to agree, the psp was meant for games, if anything I'd wait until you see this years game line up for the psp at E3 and such. They're releasing alot of non-port games and alot of them look really good. But again if anything wait to see what's being released this year before judging to much or deciding on what to pic
 
Winklewil said:
I'd hate to watch a movie I cared about on that dinky little screen, and any "novelty" short-length videos you kept on it can only get old very fast.
Click to expand...

I wouldn't characterize the screen as "dinky." It's bright and crisp and surprisingly good for watching movies. If you buy a decent-sized memory card, you can fit three or four full-length movies on there.
 
Halifirien said:
I wouldn't characterize the screen as "dinky." It's bright and crisp and surprisingly good for watching movies. If you buy a decent-sized memory card, you can fit three or four full-length movies on there.
Click to expand...
Fair enough. To be completely honest, I've never watched a movie on anything smaller than a medium-small television ... bearing that in mind, perhaps I don't have the personal experience necessary to speak with authority on this. I do know, however, that the reason I haven't watched a movie on anything smaller is because I'm so turned off by the idea. If I really want to watch a movie (something I don't do often), I almost always prefer my own television. This is probably why I'll never own one of these new video iPods.

I just can't imagine sitting in public, somewhere, watching something so small, knowing that it was originally intended to be projected to a size larger than ME. It would be too distracting for me; long-travel situations are the only time I could see myself actually using a PSP like this. Otherwise, I want a display at least in excess of ten inches.

No, I meant a display screen, you perverts. o_O

I will grant that this quirk of mine probably won't be the case for most people. As Anttaru pointed out, when depth perception is taken into account, you'll probably actually perceive the images on a PSP at least as large as a normal TV a few feet away.
 
Well i don't side with Sony or Nintendo with this one or anything, and as for emulation on PSP Drew has updated the emulator once so far. As soon as you select it, you gotta press down and x quickly then your in.

(Holy shit there is a baby elephant on the TV. So cute ; ; African Lion Safari lol)

Anyway...
Sony has hardly anything on Nintendo when it comes to games, i have come to appreaciate only a few games on the PSP. Being disc based i would imagine PSP can run much larger games. DS has more hardware to software flexability.

Avi/mpeg playback on the PSP, is a nice accessary for visual artists. Which is what i like the most about it. Animator or movie director, you carry a PSP on you, you'll be able to show clientel and colleagues you're craft at will.

If you want a unique handheld, then DS all the way.

If you're deciding between an i-pod and a gaming system, go PSP.

The Two can do things the other cannot, and they boath have games with very nice graphics and sound.

Best thing for Sculli to do, is to go for the handheld, and try them out in the shop before he makes the purchase. Talk to the sales person about it and talk about what he's looking for and what might the two systems offer on it. Never buy a car without looking under the hood and test driving it. Same thing here.
 
Due to my lousy money-management skills, I have both.

The PSP is nicer on the eyes and can hold music, movies, etc, but when it comes to actually playing a game, some of the load times bug me. The original DS is kinda industrial looking, and it just fels big in your hands. (Hopefully my DS Lite will come in this week. omgineedtostopspendingallmymoney.)

The PSP has a browser but typing in web addresses takes a while to get used to. I think the DS is supposed to get a browser in June or July.

In terms of games, I think the DS games are a lot more fun. The second screen and stylus make for some interesting gameplay in games like Tramua Center, which rules. And the new Metroid = awesome.

PictoChat + Liquor = (yes, please) It seems to magnify your ability to sketch certain parts of the human anatomy.

Neither has a really good rpg (that I know of) yet.

Honestly, since I got the DS, I think I've used my PSP once or twice, and that was only when I couldn't find my stylus or someone else was using it.
 
Winklewil said:
Otherwise, I want a display at least in excess of ten inches.
Click to expand...

That reminds me, you can put porn on the PSP...which can be held with one hand. So much for Nintendo's "Touching is good" campaign for the DS. :cool:

Not really a selling point, but amusing just the same.
 
If you play FFXI on any platform, no it's not really worth it.
If you don't, then sure...Unless you are scraping together for your next PB&J sandwich.
 
I own a PSP.

Couple of things I want to note. A lot of people seem to be noting WiFi on the DS. PSP has WiFi as well. Works really well too. Has both infrastructer and Ad-Hoc modes as well as a surprisingly robust web-browser. I have played TigerWoods at my office with co-workers.

As far as the movies go, I'm used to watching movies on my 65" Tv at home. I had the same worries as a previous poster. On my last trip, I took the PSP on the Plane with me. It was surprisingly great!

As far as daylight goes, Direct sunlight is bad, but general daylight is fine. It has a brightness button that corrects problems well.

The knock is the games. As stated, to date a lot of the games are just ports of PS2 tittles, but that is starting to change. Personally I am looking foward to this months release of field commander. Every piece of footage, gameplay, and review I've seen leads me to believe this may end up being one of the best TBS games around. If you are a C&C, or Warcraft/Starcraft buff, this will be one to check out.

http://www.ebgames.com/product.asp?product_id=190193
 
Looking for a true gaming handheld? PSP isnt for you. Looking for a gaming handheld, MP3 player, portable DVD player, random image storage, and somthing to playback neat video clips for entertainment? Then it'll be the best 200$ you've ever spent.

And even in the game market, while the DS holds onto largest NUMBER of games, you have to remember that the library includes about 20% "junk" games (AKA, new mary-kate/ashely game) and PSP is slowly catching up in games. Ghost in the Shell, dispite the fact that almost all anime games are crap, is prety good. Liberty City Stories is awsome, so is Dynasty Warriors. And in the future, square is suposedly making a new Valkyrie Profile exclusively for the PSP.


Winklewil said:
I'd hate to watch a movie I cared about on that dinky little screen
Click to expand...

If i was at home? of couse i'd watch it on my computer or regular TV. Unfortunatly, i cant bring either of those onto the 30 minute bus ride to university, or to the library while i wait for my next class. I thank god for every day i get to watch Advent children wherever i am.

Get a PSP and a 2gig card for it. You'll never look at a portable entertainment device again, ever.
 
PSP is nice if you'd rather do a buttload of other things besides play games.

If you really just want to play games, DS > PSP by a solid (not huge, but solid) margin.
 
Don't know if you know this (you probably do) but I think the biggest turn off movie-wise for the PSP is the fact that they're on UMD. I'm not so bitchy about watching movies on a small screen but it really rubs me the wrong way when I've had to buy a movie 3 times. VHS > DVD > UMD? No thanks.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top