Quote Originally Posted by zmweasel
Your definition of "original" works for me. And I don't think anyone denies that Lumines is the best original PSP game, or that most of the PSP launch games are extensions of existing franchises--which is pretty much what you'd expect from launch games. Nintendo has brought or is bringing all of its 20-year-old franchises to the DS, so are you as annoyed with that system's library as you are with the PSP's?
yes, i am annoyed, sega stole nintendo's thunder in the early 90's with original games, and sony took over the industry on the back of original titles. im not saying there is no room for sequels, but there has to be a good mix of original material. This is a knock on modern gaming as much as it is a knock on the PSP or the DS.

It's not an innovation, but it's the nature of optical media, and the UMD format certainly moves videogame portables forward in terms of storage capacity at affordable prices. A 1.8GB cart certainly wouldn't clock in at $40-$50.
the biggest upsides to optical media are price and storage. But UMDs are proprietary as any cartridge, meaning that Sony manufactures all the discs and gets a bigger cut of money as opposed to standard CD or DVD roms. first party games are 40 bucks, and third party games are 50. it remains to be seen what the price point will be for greatest hits and budget titles, but my guess would 30. thus the price advantage of optical media this time around is null

the other upside of higher storage sounds great, but how many games truly take advantage of the extra capacity to enhance gameplay? most of the data on modern games arent polygons and AI, it is FMVs, and music. on a console these features are great (especially on a huge TV with surround sound), but the effect on a handheld (even with a great screen) is greatly diminished. plus, loading and playing FMVs or audio directly from the disc sucks down battery life, but thats another bullet point.

Many of the PSP games thus far are actually very well-suited to brief play sessions. Sony has talked numerous times about making sure its PSP titles can be played in short spurts. Also, basically every PSP game thus far allows you to put the system into sleep mode and resume gameplay from where you left off, or save your game at any time, or both. If the battery runs low, you just sleep/save, recharge, and resume.
sleep mode is nice, but its an emergency measure that skirts the real issue. what fun is a game system if the battery dies on me, sure i wont lose my progress, but im SOL until i get home.

the battery itself seems to be fine, reports say that if you are playing mp3 files from a memory stick, you can get 12 hours out of the battery. it goes back to the decision to use optical media. if sony wasnt so dead set on making the PSP a movie player, solid state media couldve been used for games, and the cost of the unit, and its battery life and load times wouldve been much better.

Looking at a DP forum poll and thinking it reflects North American PSP defect rates as a whole is a little bit crazy.
even if you cut the rate in half, you still have a very high number of bad units. in the past, bad consoles were defined by the lack of abuse it could take (NES, Brickboy, original PSX), but with the PS2 and the PSP, machines are broken out of the package at a higher rate

What numbers are you quoting? Where are you finding PSPs sitting on store shelves? Are you citing anecdotal "evidence" or actual sales statistics, which won't be available for a while yet?
there are no hard numbers to quote, and Sony will certainly spin the initial sales report, but i go by a few observations

- PSPs are still readily available
- news reports on launch day said PSPs would be in short supply and sony expected to sell 1 million units "within a few days"
- retailers had low supply measures in place, such as 1 system per customer rules
- both sony and retailers positioned the PSP in a bundle package, banking on high demand and limited supply. both parties wanted to squeeze extra profit from what was expected to be a slam dunk launch.