I think the PSP will have it's place, but I think it'll take a while before it truly takes off. It's a bit pricey, the battery life isn't that good (maybe the worse thing about it is that it's variable - it depends on the application) and now it seems the loading times are sluggish. Those kinds of things counts a lot of points in the portable market, that IS different than the home console market. things might get better when Sony releases a new PSP model and get lower prices.
The PSP success also depends on public and 3rd party developer response in regards to original content. It's very likely that the PSP will be flooded with straight ports of existing games (the current launch title list is full of them already), with changes being limited to downscale the graphics (the PSP is miles behind the PS2 in terms of power and RAM) and control scheme changes in a few games (since there are no L2, R2, nor R3).
Right now developers are playing it safe and avoiding doing anything too ambitious on it.
I also fear the UMD drive will not be used to it's fullest. The budget and development cycles for portable games are much lower than home console games. Due to RAM limits, you can't get much on screen on the PSP, so making a game use 1.8 GB means lots of unique content (many levels/areas/characters, each with unique textures), and such content plays a big part in a game's budget (ever noticed that low budget games are often short, or reuse graphics a lot?). Developers are also being advised to avoid streaming data from the UMD constantly (FMV and music), and will hardly fill a whole disc up.
But I can predict nothing. This situation is nothing but an experiment: both the PSP and the DS have distinct proposals as portables. Time will tell which one the public will fall in love with, and that will shape the future market.
The PSP success also depends on public and 3rd party developer response in regards to original content. It's very likely that the PSP will be flooded with straight ports of existing games (the current launch title list is full of them already), with changes being limited to downscale the graphics (the PSP is miles behind the PS2 in terms of power and RAM) and control scheme changes in a few games (since there are no L2, R2, nor R3).
Right now developers are playing it safe and avoiding doing anything too ambitious on it.
I also fear the UMD drive will not be used to it's fullest. The budget and development cycles for portable games are much lower than home console games. Due to RAM limits, you can't get much on screen on the PSP, so making a game use 1.8 GB means lots of unique content (many levels/areas/characters, each with unique textures), and such content plays a big part in a game's budget (ever noticed that low budget games are often short, or reuse graphics a lot?). Developers are also being advised to avoid streaming data from the UMD constantly (FMV and music), and will hardly fill a whole disc up.
But I can predict nothing. This situation is nothing but an experiment: both the PSP and the DS have distinct proposals as portables. Time will tell which one the public will fall in love with, and that will shape the future market.
