The Sony PSP was discussed heavily on TamsPalm’s while we still were at Blogger’s. But our interest in the hyped game console recently began to dwindle, and son it became PSP silent here on TamsPalm. Or, to be honest, it was silent until yours truly got such a machine for half an hour at a friend’s.

First of all, the graphics look really good, and the machine seems to have pretty good games. However, most of the games couldn’t really be tested-they took way too long to load on the PSP.

The PlayStation portable is optical-disk based, so it has pretty long loading times compared to a Nintento 64 or a TapWave zodiac(system imminent). And the publishers/Sony take the wrong approach. Each PSP game that was tested displayed loads of splashscreens, videos and other stuff that couldnt be skipped. One really felt that the games were ported from a normal PlayStation-and this is the wrong idea imho.

Here is a 3gp video that shows a particularily long startup sequence.

The problem about splashscreens is very simple-players use handheld gaming devices for short periods of time, for example, while riding a tram or standing in the elevator. Then, having to wait an extended period of time for a game definitely reduces the system’s attractivity!

Overall, I dare to say that the PSP will not really suffer from this because of the great game lineup. However, if another console with shorter loading times and the same games would appear…adios, PSP.

Any feedback?

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