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PSP News
by Published on August 20th, 2012 22:36- Categories:
- PSP News,
- Playstation Vita News
PSP sold more than twice as many units as Vita managed during Sony's most recent financial quarter, new data shows.
The contrasting performances of the two handheld systems were revealed today when Sony confirmed to CVG that worldwide Vita sales stood at 2.2 million units as of June 30, 2012.The figure was originally provided to websitePlayFront by PlayStation Germany's Uwe Bassendowski, although the article didn't specify a cut-off date for the sales.
Prior to the confirmation of 2.2 million Vita sales, the system's last publicly announced sales totalwas 1.8 million as of the end of Sony's financial year which concluded March 31.
The new calculations means that the PS Vita sold about 400,000 units worldwide during April, May and June.
When combined with separate Sony data, it shows that the PSP is outselling Vita globally by a ratio greater than 2:1.
In August, Sony told investors that combined Vita and PSP sales reached 1.4 million unitsduring the three months in question. Therefore PSP accounted for about one million of the total, or 71 per cent of Sony's handheld unit sales.
In a new interview with CVG, PlayStation Europe CEO Jim Ryan said "we still have a significant PSP business in many markets, which is something that tends to be forgotten".
Earlier this month Sony Computer Entertainment UK boss Fergal Gara said the company "would love" to be selling more Vitas, while SCEA chief Jack Tretton labelled Vita sales "acceptable".
Yet Sony still has high hopes for its acclaimed handheld. Ryan told CVG that a strong Christmas line-up, complete with Call of Duty Black Ops Declassified and Assassin's Creed Liberation, is expected to reinvigorate the retail performance of the new device.
http://www.computerandvideogames.com...-data-reveals/ ...by Published on August 13th, 2012 22:14- Categories:
- PSP News,
- PS3 News,
- Playstation Vita News
The MotorStorm franchise, which includes five games across PS2, PS3, PSP and Vita, has sold more than 6 million units, Sony XDev Studio Europe's Pete Smith said at GDC Europe on August 13. Smith gave a talk discussing tips of pitching to publishers, citing MotorStorm's Evolution Studios as an example of a team with a clear focus and solid marketing technique.
The latest MotorStorm installment, MotorStorm RC, launched on PS3 and Vita in March.
http://www.joystiq.com/2012/08/13/mo...illion-copies/ ...by Published on August 2nd, 2012 21:39- Categories:
- PSP News
Console giant blames declining PS3 and PSP sales only partially offset by Vita
Sony's games division has posted a $45m (£28.9m) operating loss for the quarter ending June 30th.
Sales decreased 14.5 per cent over the same quarter last year to $1.49bn (£958million).
The decrease was largely due to slowing sales of PS3 and PSP, although sales were 'partially offset' by PlayStation Vita.
PS3 and PS2 combined hardware sales were 2.8m for the quarter, a drop over the 3.2m sold during the same period the year before.
Software sales for both consoles were 20.1m, which is down over the 27.6m posted in Q1 2011..
http://www.develop-online.net/news/4...ffers-30m-loss
...by Published on July 20th, 2012 01:36- Categories:
- PSP News
Wizorb is officially spreading to up to three more platforms next week in North America. Beatshapers has ported Tribute Games' RPG-style Breakout game to PlayStation Minis, allowing users to play it on PS3 and PSP, and, as Beatshapers says, "eventually on your PS Vita" – because of the vagaries of the Vita's PSP backward compatibility, it's difficult to tell if it will run on Vita, or if not, when.
By breaking bricks and defeating monsters, you can help save the kingdom of Gorudo – both by, you know, defeating the monsters, and by collecting money to rebuild the destroyed homes and businesses in its towns.
http://www.joystiq.com/2012/07/19/wi...-mini-july-24/
...by Published on July 4th, 2012 22:55- Categories:
- PSP News,
- PS3 News,
- PS2 News,
- PS1 News,
- Playstation Vita News
Digital Foundry on why the Gaikai acquisition goes beyond simply streaming PlayStation games
Despite some bizarre denials, the news that Sony was going to move into the cloud gaming space ranks as one of the worst-kept secrets in the games business, leaked to the press over a month before the official announcement. Perhaps what is more surprising in the light of Monday's confirmation of the Gaikai acquisition is that we still have very little idea of what it all actuallymeans for the gamer.
"Gaikai is more than just a delivery platform for existing content - in the hands of Sony's game devs, the possibilities for new gaming experiences built for the system from the ground-up are mouth-watering."
The only additional piece of detail that tells us much of interest is that it's Sony Computer Entertainment that is the buyer, meaning that this is a PlayStation deal, not just a shot of gaming adrenaline into the arm of the company's ailing HDTV business. Sony's statements on its plans for the cloud sound suitably grand, but don't really tell us anything we didn't already know anyway:
"By combining Gaikai's resources including its technological strength and engineering talent with SCE's extensive game platform knowledge and experience, SCE will provide users with unparalleled cloud entertainment experiences," explained SCE overlord Andrew House.
"SCE will deliver a world-class cloud-streaming service that allows users to instantly enjoy a broad array of content ranging from immersive core games with rich graphics to casual content anytime, anywhere on a variety of internet-connected devices."
The obvious conclusion to take from this would be the migration of existing and planned PlayStation content to Gaikai infrastructure, representing an enticing opportunity: state-of-the-art titles in combination with an enormous back catalogue running on an ever-expanding range of streaming devices. Kotaku ran with a great headline on this story yesterday: You May Already Own PlayStation 4.
To a certain extent, we've already had a preview of just how cool cloud streaming the latest games can be: on Digital Foundry at Eurogamer, we've already suggested that OnLive running on an Xperia Play smartphone offers something approaching a true next-gen handheld experience: latency is still an issue but downscaling an HD image onto a smaller, mobile mobile screen solves many of the image quality issues that have blighted cloud gameplay thus far, and the overall effect can be very impressive. It's a taste of the future, and improvements to infrastructure in combination with server-side technological advances are almost certain to turn what is currently a great tech demo into a viable cross-device gaming platform.
Sony's Xperia Play smartphone runs OnLive very well indeed, the smaller screen resolving many of the image quality issues. Latency is still an issue but it is a tantalising glimpse of the future of streaming gameplay.
Looking at things from a more short-term perspective, there's already been some talk that we could see Gaikai tech implemented to supply playable demos. While this is a possibility (running PC versions on the existing Gaikai network), there's a strong chance that developers and publishers wouldn't want to see their console games represented on the PlayStation Network in this way - perhaps it would be better to use streaming tech to get demos seen by a new audience, one perhaps not so concerned with matters like input lag or video quality - things that are noticed by the core audience.
I would hope that Sony would take a more measured approach in how Gaikai is deployed, especially as there are major technological issues to overcome in integrating the technology into the PlayStation Network. Gaikai's chosen infrastructure uses a completely different hardware architecture to any PlayStation platform, past or present. Sony has traditionally created its own gaming hardware, while David Perry's outfit uses server farms based on Intel processors and NVIDIA graphics cores.
"Streaming existing PlayStation content over Gaikai can't happen overnight - the cloud infrastructure runs on fundamentally different architecture - Sony will need time to adapt."
The obvious solution would be to roll-out a mass of back-compat PlayStation 3s to the Gaikai datacentres, perhaps utilising a variation of Sony's Remote Play technology to get everything integrated fairly easily. Unfortunately, this wouldn't produce very good results: even when using a local network, Remote Play is very laggy, and factoring in the internet would reduce a sub-optimal experience to a borderline unplayable one on any fast-action game. This approach would fly in the face of all the hard work Gaikai has done in making cloud gaming work, and to be frank, Sony could do it themselves without forking out $380m for the privilege. It's the know-how, tech and infrastructure that Sony has paid for.
The basics of "how cloud works" in providing a playable experience are fairly straightforward: the idea is to get close to current ...by Published on June 29th, 2012 01:01- Categories:
- PSP News
Miles Jacobson, the studio director at Sports Interactive, has for the first time spoken publicly about events which led to the Championship Manager team defecting to Sega and establishing its eminent rival, Football Manager.
Sports Interactive studio director Miles JacobsonIn the nine years since Sports Interactive ceased its partnership with Eidos, Jacobson has not discussed the matter in public, though yesterday at the popular GameHorizon conference in Newcastle he held a public one-on-one discussion with Eidos life president Ian Livingstone."During our times with Eidos there were some run-ins, but legally I'm not allowed to talk about this unless I get permission," he told Livingstone.
According to an account of the discussion by an Edge journalist, Livingstone then indicated that Jacobson could discuss the matter.
"I'm sure there are two sides to this story," Jacobson began.
"At the time [before the split] we felt there was a lack of respect for our work from Eidos. There seemed to be an attitude at the time in the industry that anyone could make games."
"Eidos set up Beautiful Game Studios nine months before Championship Manager 4 was due to come out," he said, referencing the studio that would eventually take over duties on Championship Manager.
"Eidos told me that Beautiful Games Studios was making a platform game. I thought our number was up."
Jacobson added that, during the tense developments, he and his studio were also arguing for higher royalty rates on the Championship Manager games.
"Eidos wanted more control. We wanted more control," he said.
Livingstone said that Eidos was "preparing for the future" as the company had grown suspicious that Sports Interactive was looking to leave the company.
The split between Eidos and Sports interactive, which took place in 2003, resulted in the publisher retaining the IP and the studio keeping the base code and game database.
Sports Interactive joined Sega the same year following a meting between Jacobson and the publisher's key executives.
"I went for a curry with the CEO of Sega in Japan and Europe and he made me an offer on a napkin," he said.
"I kept telling them we were not for sale. I told them they would have to double the offer for me to even discuss it."
According to Jacobson, Sega more than doubled its acquisition price the next day.
"I told [fellow studio directors] Paul and Ov as my best mates that they weren't going to get another opportunity like this to secure their families' future," he said.
"And I told them I was sure I could get a clause that would enable us to retain our independence."
"Looking back I wouldn't change what we did," Jacobson concluded.
"A developer can't go through anything bigger than breaking up a brand that took eleven years to build. I can't believe there is anything more stressful for a developer. I collapsed at E3 when the final decision to leave was made. It was partly because I had glandular fever, and partly down to the stress."
Football Manager 2013, the latest edition in the series, is due to be announced in a matter of months.
http://www.computerandvideogames.com...manager-split/ ...by Published on June 19th, 2012 23:08- Categories:
- PSP News
Here’s [FlorianH's] setup for driving a PlayStation Portable screen with an FPGA. He’s using the DE0-Nano board to do this, and the first order of business was to establish a way to connect the two. He did a great job of etching his own breakout board, which has some traces that are less than 10 mils thick. Soldering the connectors for the screen was a bit of a challenge, and he shared several pictures of the process for your enjoyment.
With everything hooked up he fired it up with just a couple of lines of code to draw a test pattern. From there it was on to building a more intensive driver. [FlorianH] mentioned to us that he’s just starting to learn about FPGAs after having worked extensively with 8-bit microcontrollers. He’s been documenting his work on his site, and finds himself frequently referencing his own material so remember how he did things. Our vicarious enjoyment is an unintended (but welcomed) consequence of that habit.
http://hackaday.com/2012/06/18/drivi...-with-an-fpga/ ...by Published on June 13th, 2012 00:41- Categories:
- PSP News
In a rather strange and altogether puzzling move, Sony and Square-Enix have announced that Final Fantasy III is coming to the PlayStation Portable. That’s right, not the PlayStation Vita. The PlayStation Portable. (However, it’s worth noting that the game should technically be playable on Vita should you choose to download the game to it.)
First discussed by Andriasang several days ago, the PSP version of the game is essentially a port of the Nintendo DS version that came to that handheld back in 2006. It’s due out in Japan on September 20th and will cost 3,990 Yen (approximately $50) on UMD and 3,300 Yen (approximately $41.50) on the PlayStation Network.
Further details note that the port will support 16:9 ratio, “a gallery mode with BGM and illustrations, the option for switching to the original Famicom/NES music, and an auto battle option that doubles the battle speed to two times.”
Final Fantasy III originally came to Famicom in April of 1990 and shouldn’t be confused with the SNES iteration of Final Fantasy III released in the west in 1994, which is in fact Final Fantasy VI. Initially scheduled to come to the Wondersawn in the early 2000s, western gamers didn’t get their hands on the game (legally and properly translated, anyway) until the 2006 Nintendo DS release. It was the last primary Final Fantasy game to be released in the west.
There’s no word yet on a western release of Final Fantasy III for PSP, though we’ll keep you updated as we learn more.
http://uk.ign.com/articles/2012/06/1...-coming-to-psp
...by Published on June 11th, 2012 21:52- Categories:
- PSP News,
- Nintendo DS News,
- Nintendo 3DS News,
- Playstation Vita News
Sony/Nintendo shipments take a beating from phones and tablets.
A couple of years ago, if you heard gaming war cries like 'Hadouken' in public, it would have come from a Sony PSP or Nintendo DS – especially in 2008 when combined device shipments peaked at 47 million.
However, ABI Research says you're now more likely to hear the sounds coming from smartphones and tablets.
It claims the mobile is pushing handheld consoles towards a "sustainable niche" market, estimating that Sony/Nintendo handheld gaming device shipments will fall to 38 million in 2013, and stay flat to 2017.
Michael Inouye, senior analyst at ABI, said: "Mobile devices will compete with dedicated handheld gaming devices, but select consumer segments like core gamers and those individuals who do not want or have a smartphone or tablet will still provide some demand."
An example of the turning tide was demonstrated last year when the Nintendo 3DS started off strong during its Q1 2011 launch, but Q2 forced the Japanese firm to slash the price from $249 to $170 to keep buyers interested.
http://www.mobile-ent.biz/news/read/...a-niche/018273 ...by Published on May 29th, 2012 22:27- Categories:
- PSP News
A new colour variant of the PSP will be released at UK retail in July.
The Ice White PSP-E1000 will have an RRP of just £89.99.
The PSP E-1000 was announced last August. It’s a trimmed-down version of the established hardware. As well as being heavier than other models, it also omits Wi-Fi support, though digital games can still be transferred to the device using Sony’s Media Go software.
Crucially, it is compatible with PSP’s extensive UMD software library.
Sony is also trying to associate the launch with its PSP Essential software selection, that offers loads of really great games for just £9.99 a piece.
http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/ice-w...is-july/096845 ...- Search DCEmu
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Catherine: Full Body’s English translation for the Vita