The UMD drive eats power. Sony were trying to impose another useless media standard on the world instead of trying to make the best portable gaming platform. Nintendo have punished them badly for this arrogance.

Badly!!??? I hardly would say the sales figures of the PSP are BAD!? Come on Bruce on Games, you're supposed to be giving Incisive Industry Analysis yet you're sounding like a Nintendo fan boy.

Yes the UMD does eat power and it probably isn't needed in the world today but the console's sales aren't exactly poor in and there is more to the PSP with its PS3 connectivity etc. There's a lot more life left in the PSP.

I own both a PSP and a DS.

I use my PSP to listen to music and watch anime on the way to work. I charge it every other day.

I use my DS to play games all the time.
I charge it once a week.

I think that sums up the difference between the two pretty well....

P.S I'm not a Nintendo fan boy......

Hardip, All you have to do is look at the relative sales of games between the PSP and DS to realise that the PSP is being badly punished. This is the games industry.
Here is the latest US top 50 just to see how bad the punishment is: http://www.vgchartz.com/aweekly.php

I don't have to look at sales figures. I know that Nintendo sales are higher than PSP sales in both games & consoles. But you're saying it's too little, too late which I think is wrong. There is a future to be had with the PSP especially with its PS3 connection and with sales increasing all the time with the PS3 I can see subsequent PSP sales increasing. Also a lot is coming out for the PSP/PS3 such as the Sat Nav abilitiy and the VOD capabilities in the near future. But according to you it's too late which I think is wrong to suggest because I think that in the near future sales are going to increase even further on the PSP. It may never beat total DS sales, but so what, that doesn't condemn it to the trash.

It is a bit stupid to claim the PSP is being 'badly punished'. I mean, Ford may not sell as many cars as Toyota, but it's still doing pretty well for itself. By the same token, DS may be selling better than PSP but Sony's machine is still doing very well. Less fanboy nonsense please.

UMD useless> I totally agree, but what were the other options? They were trying to create a machine which could produce games somewhere between the PS1 and PS2 level of quality. Trying to fit the resources for that on flash carts would have made games ludicrously expensive!

If they'd been a little forward thinking, and pushed electronic distribution on the PSP, they could have put a mini-HDD in the PSP, but that still would have eaten batteries for breakfast.

Anyone care to speculate on a better solution than a (proprietary) disk based system?

Ladies!
Can't we just be friends?There both selling to two different tastes,ages and users so *****ally cares?And by the way my speccy is loads better than your 64,so there.

"I use my PSP to listen to music and watch anime on the way to work. I charge it every other day.
I use my DS to play games all the time.
I charge it once a week."

So what you're saying is the PSP is used constantly for streaming music and film data from a Memory Stick (most likely - from UMD it would drain even quicker) vs game loads on a DS cart that only happen occasionally (and it's solid state)?

I'd say that's an unfair comparison of the battery lives, if that's what you're trying to do.

How would the DS battery life fair if you stuck an optical drive in it?!

@ TORC:

And my BBC Micro Model B beats both the Spectrum and C64 hands down!!!

PSP and DS are two different platforms for different people. I for one dont like most of the DS games so I have a psp. The battery is not that bright as i have to charge it every 3-4 days, but i don't think it's that much of an effort. >.>
Sony does not make different media standards for fun but for experimenting (because they do well enough to be able to afford it) and for future reference. If something Sony breaks down u can only replace it with an other sony part...
An other so-called useless media device, the minidisc is one of the best audio media easily available for small studios and bands and still used by professionals. Its not what it was made for, but turned out to be good at it. One can never know what umd will become...

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