March 22, 2005

PSP: The New iPod?

by Piers Fawkes

Psp_yellowThe PSP launches this week and the more we hear about it the more we wonder if Sir Stringer’s job search found him a cushy little number. By the looks of it, the PSP will become the product of 2005.

Although Sony seems to have designed the PSP to dominate three areas of personal
entertainment ( portable audio, portable video, and portable gaming) the more we read about it, the broader the impact we can imagine.These little babies could really become our personal media centers to use at home, on the road and even at work.

A few things that blow us away about the new PSP:

1. Big(ish) screen, small(ish) size
2. WiFi
3. In-room/cafe peer to peer file swapping/IM/everything else
4. Email
5. Web Browser
6. Movies
7. Ripping movies via BitTorrent & PSPcasting
8. Baby Phat versions and Marc Jacobs carriers
9. Flash USB sticks become video tapes
10. Porting programs through memory stick
11. Carry enough tunes (inc. MP3) that fit on your 1GB memory stick
12. Other stuff like keyboards
13. Future PDA functionality
14. Oh yeah, did we mention you can play games on it??

Anything else PSFKers?

Looks like Jobs will have to take a look at satellite radio and video iPod pretty soon.

For a moment, as I wrote this I imagined a future PSP that wirelessly managed all your in home entertainment: it was your Tivo, your music collection, your video bank, your photo library - playing through your TV, stereo and projector - and it also wirelessly managed all your in office needs: it was your browser, your email, you could swap files with colleagues and send others to the printers/Kinko, you could present your reel, portfolio, tunes via the screen. Now what little white box could do that??

I told my girlfriend how exciting this product was - and she replied, “Yeah, but
does it have a phone?” That stumped me - and then I found this article suggesting that they might develop VoIP for the PSP! And the means it will wireless VoIP too!

Article categories: Design, Electronics & Gadgets, Entertainment, Lifestyle, Web & Technology, Youth

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12 Responses to “PSP: The New iPod?”

  1. Piers Fawkes
    Posted from: 151.205.169.132

    March 22nd, 2005 at 1:47 pm

    Now I have had time to reflect on this / walk the streets of Soho NYC and pop into the Apple store … I wonder if Sony’s got a bigger job to do than my post suggests.

    When people buy an iPod or a notebook they’re buying into Apple, they’re buying into a brand, a lifestyle - something bigger than the sum of the parts.

    So yeah - this Sony PSP product might be ‘all that’ but what do you get when you buy it?? I suggest, just the PSP - and maybe that’s what Mr Stringer has a job to do.

  2. Joe Ford
    Posted from: 82.69.93.135

    March 23rd, 2005 at 8:15 am

    Perhaps, but there’s a enormous market for the a “portable/wireless everything device” that’s not part of a big family at all. You dont see all the Windows users rushing out to buy Macintosh Minis but they have found a member of the Mac family that they can use without a full-frontal brain/UI lobotomy.

    I would imagine the PSP is, like the i-Pod, completely universal. And that, for me, is the smart conversation. It does everything, with anything. And everyone knows how to operate a PS2.

  3. Ted Shelton
    Posted from: 67.119.26.104

    March 25th, 2005 at 12:20 am

    How about PSP plus Orb? http://www.orb.com — then your imagination of a future PSP that wirelessly manages all your home entertainment could come true… maybe in April when Sony releases their web browser…

  4. no.156
    Posted from: 12.74.60.184

    March 25th, 2005 at 1:52 am

    I have been watching the coming of the PSP for some time now, being a PS2 owner and wanting nothing more than to have a smaller version to carry around with me. I have in fact recently purched a new PDA which has stopped me from picking up the PSP. I have been impressed with how much power is in my new PDA and from my understanding the PSP has as much if not more.

  5. v_1946
    Posted from: 82.43.214.100

    March 28th, 2005 at 9:43 am

    “When people buy an iPod or a notebook they’re buying into Apple, they’re buying into a brand, a lifestyle - something bigger than the sum of the parts.”

    But that brand/lifestyle only really matters to other Apple owners. When you buy an Ipod you get a music player (possibly a picture viewer if you get the latest one) and an identification with a certain,small group of consumers.

    A PSP gives you that and so much more with a n already growing home-brew scene.
    I can’t see how buying into the Apple lifestyle gives any benefit apart from the supposed ‘coolness’.

  6. Guy Brighton
    Posted from: 151.205.103.127

    March 28th, 2005 at 10:40 am

    Some Sony news - about the vibrating controller of the PS2 : http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/4387045.stm

  7. Harry Zink
    Posted from: 151.205.103.127

    March 28th, 2005 at 3:43 pm

    SONY released their PSP to loud fanfare in the US, hoping for it to become a virtual sales penomenon. Heck, there was even talk of it being an iPod-killer (isn’t everything, these days?). Fortunately, Steve Jobs is probably resting easy these days, and not worrying to much about this ‘iPod killer’

    Anyway, considering that the store shelves are piled high with PSPs these days, the expected bonanza of sales clearly didn’t happen. A friend of mine bought one (he works at Sony, and got a good deal), so I had a chance to check it out.

    Yes, it plays neat games - and allegedly it can also be used to play back music and video.

    Well, if you play by SONY’s rules.

    Of course, the PSP has internal memory expansion using SONY’s proprietary Memory Stick Duo technology - 1 gb costs roughly $200, which is nearly 4 times the cost of competing formats; furthermore, while it has a DVD-like mechanism, it can only utilize SONY’s (again, proprietary) UDM DVD format disks, in a custom cartridge. There is no way to record on these, yet.

    DVD movie media will be provided by SONY, in the UDM format, at a cost of $20 a pop - considering that regular movies can be picked up at far less, on sale, I doubt very much that SONY and Disney (both of which are delusional that their titles will sell in that format) will make any kind of money on that front.

    You can import movies and music from you computer, via a clumsy USB interface, by dragging the files to the PSP using various tools. Note: the PSP does not automatically detect USB connectivity, nor can you save anywhere else but the memory card (see the price/storage ratio earlier).

    So, while the PSP would be a great platform to carry movies with you (the screen is great, and the speakers are decent), the design and engineering hamper that use.

    Oh yeah, there is absolutely no video out on the PSP either - so forget abot plugging it into any sort of video display.

    What SONY should have done (IMO), to have this thing fly off the shelves, would be to think a bit creatively, and most of all, to think a bit pre-emptively.

    - Either provide a 20gb hard drive, or provide a media bay on the back that allows switching in either the UDM player, or a hard drive module to provide storage.

    - release an external UDM recorder, with FireWire or USB2 connection, to encourage the release of content for the PSP.

    - sell UDM recordable cartridges ($$$)

    - provide software (Mac and PC) that allows automatic synchronisation of Music and Images on the desktop machine with playlists/albums on the PSP.

    - provide a direct connection to the SONY Connect service (as they won’t support anything else, anyway, because they are still stupid), allowing a PSP interface to download music directly.

    - Support AAC/MP4 music format, to be able to claim ‘iTunes Compatible’ (not iTMS compatible, though).

    - Provide video out (Duh!)

    - Start an alternate service to Connect, that provides Sony movies, as well as TV shows in PSP format, and available to download ONLY via the PSP. This way, Sony would have an immediate entry in the video download business, and by being first, has the potential to dominate that market — this would have been a smart, pre-emptive move before Apple takes over that market as well — but as Sony is still composed of doofus executives, they will once again hand this market to Apple, by being inactive.

    7 simple points, every single one of which SONY will fail to grasp, and which will pretty much doom the PSP (which *IS* a neat piece of technology) to irrelevance, at least when it comes to re-engineering themselves a serious technology and media player.

    Oh well, there’s Sony for you!

    Harry

  8. Digital Femme
    Posted from: 66.69.158.69

    March 28th, 2005 at 4:07 pm

    “When people buy an iPod or a notebook they’re buying into Apple, they’re buying into a brand, a lifestyle - something bigger than the sum of the parts.”

    .. and don’t forget, they’re buying into a whole other digital experience. ;o)

    The great thing about Apple’s “THINK DIFFERENT” philosophy is that it allows for the competition to rise to the occassion and try to deliver. It also makes for great ‘product merging’. The PSP sounds good but as Mr. Zink pointed out .. not too savvy on a seamless and smooth experience. Who wants to view DVD’s on a 3″ x 5″ or whatever the screen specs are, anyway?

    Until AI (artificial intelligence) becomes a common trend in our daily experience of interacting with life and one another I’ll stick to my Apple Coolness.

    Great post and comments by the way!

  9. Guy Brighton
    Posted from: 151.205.112.43

    April 27th, 2005 at 6:49 pm

    Web Browser For PSP launched http://www.i4u.com/article3273.html

  10. Simon King
    Posted from: 68.161.36.14

    May 3rd, 2005 at 10:12 am

    Heavy.com, a large Web host of short films and animation, has started making many of its clips available as free content specially formatted for the game system. The company hopes advertisers will support the free content by paying for quick commercials before or after the downloads, or by providing content in the form of branded entertainment.

    Whether audiences of large enough mass will watch videos and ads on the devices, however, is far from clear.

    Unilever, the first advertiser to take Heavy up on its offer, will test the potential with a series of branded shorts about two guys roaming the country and filming their efforts to meet women, all to promote Axe body spray. People can watch them at http://www.evanandgareth.com, on Heavy.com or on PSP’s after a download from Heavy.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/03/business/media/03adco.html?ex=1272772800&en=ec03500452ddd9f8&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

  11. PSFK
    Posted from: 66.151.149.17

    July 21st, 2005 at 1:54 pm

    Sony’s PSP Launches Web Browser

    Sony Computer Entertainment will release a system software update for the PlayStation Portable (PSP) next week that will add several new functions to the handheld gaming device, including the ability to browse the Internet and download TV programs. The…

  12. PSFK
    Posted from: 66.151.149.17

    August 8th, 2005 at 9:57 am

    PSP : The Web Tablet?

    It’s been almost five months since I wrote the article ‘PSP: The New iPod’ so it was interesting when Sukumar pointed me to Russell Beattie’s post, ‘Web Tablet’s Are Coming’. In his post he points out how he now only uses his PSP 25% of the time for ga…

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