Sony's Hirai Talks PlayStation Phone, PSP 2
Kazuo Hirai says Sony needs to provide a clear message of what the PlayStation Phone and PSP2 offers to consumers.
As February 2011 grows closer we've learned that Sony Ericsson is working on a PlayStation Phone and Sony Computer Entrainment is working on the PSP 2. At one point we speculated that it may have been one device, however details and images have proven otherwise. Both are also reportedly taking different approaches to gaming, a trait that even Sony's Kazuo Hirai admits may be confusing for consumers.
"We don’t want gamers to be asking, what’s the difference between [the PlayStation Phone] and a PSP," Hirai told the New York Times. "We have to come up with a message that users will understand. It would have to be a product that keeps the PlayStation’s strengths intact."
In an interview with the paper, Hirai also talked about the PSP2 without confirming actual hardware specs, referring to the much-rumored touch-based trackpad located on the back of the device and/or the PSP2's reported touch screen.
"Depending on the game, there are ones where you can play perfectly well with a touch panel," he said. "But you can definitely play immersive games better with physical buttons and pads. I think there could be games where you’re able to use both in combination."
Hirai also acknowledged the rising growth of casual gamers, indicating that the expanding casual market was actually good for Sony. "We’re seeing people who never had an interest in games join the gaming population," he said. "That means that the gaming industry pie is getting bigger."
Based on the interview, Sony Ericsson may market the PlayStation Phone as a casual gaming device like the iOS and Android platforms while the PSP2 will be geared towards the hardcore gamers. Both devices will likely support PlayStation minis, possibly allowing both groups of gamers to play together online. PlayStation One games are also rumored to be supported by Sony Ericsson's phone, opening up another multiplayer avenue for both devices.
To read the full interview, check out Kazuo Hirai's interview here.
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Sony is pretty good when it comes to analyzing and correcting their previously-made mistakes. I suppose the PSP2 will pack some heavy punch,
I'm putting high hopes into the PSPhone
Dont put your hopes for PSPhone! It will be a let down...but I guess we will wait and see what happens.
PSPhone with Tegra2 would have been good. I don't want a single core 1ghz processor in a 2011 phone.
Dont put your hopes for PSPhone! It will be a let down...but I guess we will wait and see what happens.
how the hell do you know?
how the hell do you know?
isn't it obvious? HE WENT TO THE FUTURE AND CAME BACK TO TELL US
...some people are just so naive
PSP was feature rich and suprisingly powerful in it's day. I still have my PSP 1000 sitting here, although I haven't played it much. The thing is, the games were great, the memory sticks overpriced, the UMD games take too long to load, the analog stick breaks alot (on my 3rd).
I would just make one like the PSP GO but bigger and add a phone to it, blutooth, voice recognition for user interface when using it as something other than a game console. Built in- Emulators of a bunch of Sega Genesis games.
if the psp phone can play ps1 games it must be as powerfull or more so than the psp, im better faster, hopefully more memory and a bigger screen
i only use my psp as a mediaplayer so unless it has a bigger screen or supports third party co decs i probably wont buy
I really would've liked to see the PSP2 and PSPhone as one item. It'd be nice to see the day come along where all our portable needs can be met by a single item. Smartphones in particular have come pretty close to that, but at the end of the day, we still use our laptops for typing up school reports, our portable game players for playing games (or at least, the gamers do), our music players to play music, and our phones for texting/calling. For the most part.
Still, it's good to see Sony taking a bite out of the casual pie while remaining committed to the core gaming community. Seems like these days, Sony is the only one left that's still got us in mind. Everybody else has sold out or was already gone. Sure, we've got a smattering of companies throwing us amazing support in the PC area, but at the end of the day, Sony is the only real gaming conglomerate left.
I really really wanted to give Microsoft the benefit of the doubt with the Kinect, but their xbox division has never quite been the shining star of customer satisfaction. Their favorite pastimes are finding new ways to suck money out of the customer and redirecting them to india if they try to respond.
Since the day they announced Kinect, they've been tooting its horn and keep trying to convince us that Kinect is the bright shining future of gaming. Listening to their press conferences, you'd think they've all but forgotten their normal controller. Almost kind of makes me sad, because now we've seen the kinect, we know it's quite impossible to get any sort of pro gaming out of it, and not even for the reasons the playslaves expected. It has 2 huge flaws:
30 FPS
1/4 Second Response Time
The main struggle of hardware in pro gaming is to reduce response time. It gets to the point of shaving milliseconds off. There's no way in hell pro gaming could be done with a quarter of a second response time.
So... at the end of the day even if it's a small gesture, I can really appreciate the fact that sony is making a specific, dedicated portable gaming device. Even for its shortcomings, some truly amazing titles came out for the psp. Devs didn't just toss out shit at random so you could have something to do on the go, they really worked at assembling some serious titles for us.
I mean, compare kingdom hearts: 358/2 days to Final Fantasy 7: Crisis Core, sure they both had sub-standard combat systems, but the story in crisis core was all but staggering, whereas kingdom hearts was more like: "Story? What story? We just wanted to whack things with a keyblade in the car."
psphone sounds nice but i must say:
Remember Remember the Nokia Ngage started great and went down i seriusly as owner of a fat and a go that booth projects become a hit...buy the ngage attacked my mind.
can't wait for the hardware some time i read it would give a fight to a ps2-xbox even a 360 with a very nice GPU, and of course a Cell Broadbnd CPU...
HD5870m FTW on this thing!!