SCEE: Sony Line-Up Hasn’t Met Expectations

@Archaotic:The 100% DD way of delivering games is going to hurt them at a time they don't need to hurt. They need to just ride out the PSP for two more years and kill it or at the very least slowly get people used to it, which given the adoption rate of PSN, Xbox Live and Wiiware is really low.

Building and shipping kiosks is going to cost them a butt load too.

@Gaijin is a DIRTY word!:
Let's wait for them to ANNOUNCE the damn thing first before we spend our time immediately dooming it to failure, mmkay? :P

All of these rumors could be entirely fake. We don't know yet.

@sascha23: I read that through and thought that sounded incredibly sarcastic but then I looked at your display pic and now I'm not sure.

@Mr. Tambourine Man: I think they're all complaining that it's only Sony's PSP contributions that have been weak, not everyone's. I think you could make a case for either.

NoHoldsBarred

@Gaijin is a DIRTY word!:
Well, I think a lot of people are getting ahead of themselves when it comes to the PSP Go. They're not going to IMMEDIATELY drop the UMD like a bad habit, that would be stupid, AND it would cost them severely in the retail sphere.

What's likely going to happen is that for the first year or so, publishers will be able to release games either JUST on PSN, or on PSN AND on UMD, for the companies willing to spring for the printing costs. After a while, UMDs will fade out though and retailers will sell redeemable code cards for DD games, like Microsoft did for Lost and Damned.

UMD isn't going to just disappear overnight.

@Foxstar is in love with Kotaku's two Brians.:
If they're dropping UMD, it means they're moving toward a wholly digital distribution method. I don't think that their next handheld will suddenly go back to another proprietary format if they build up infrastructure for a fully DD handheld.

@DlllusionX: Clone or Clown?: I've only recently become a gaming obsessive. My Xbox had 56 games and my 360 already has 30 so I've increased my rate of purchasing games.

xxXX_Insanities_Birth_XXxx

@Archaotic:I don't think the UMD-less PSP is going to take off like anyone wants it to, not even if it's a DSI level upgrade (Which it's seeming like).

And dropping UMD is just one more huge slap in the face when it comes to Sony formats, That's not going to win them any friends when they decide in 2-3 years that it's once again time for yet one more brand new Sony format.

@symphony_of_the_night:

It says "SCEE: Sony PSP Line-Up Hasn't Met Expectations"

What's wrong with the headline?

@Archaotic: If they drop UMD they're going to fragment the hell out of their userbase. Its pretty much a guarantee that parents will not buy the new PSP for their kids if it requires all this work just to download games for it.

And whats gonna happen to all the people that want the new PSP but don't want to re-purchase all of their old games?

If the info we have on the PSP GO! is true, Sony is making another massive mistake that might cost them all the market share they currently have in the portable space.

@Foxstar is in love with Kotaku's two Brians.:
Sony definitely approached developers and tried to evangelize them back to the platform, probably using the success of Crisis Core, God of War and Monster Hunter as signs that games can do well.

The UMD-free PSP was the final straw that drew everyone back in though. This is probably the fastest turnaround for a system previously thought to be dead in all of gaming history.

NEWSFLASH SONY, if you think you have problems selling software now, just wait until you fuck over the 50 million people out there with UMD-based PSPs.

The PSP GO! will be the next Virtual Boy if you don't let people redeem every single UMD game they own for download through PSN.

Good lord, Conan looks old as fuck now.

What about PSPs?

@Archaotic:We have follow Kotaku posters who have said Sony paid the devs and that's the only reason, the only thing we don't have is a offical leak stating it's true, but given that in Nov of last year, Ashcraft posted a topic that got 400+ replies with graphs showing that devs running from PSP development like rats leaving a sinking ship, I'm highly likely to believe it, along with that being the reason a UMDless PSP is all but in stone.

@interim has his cake and is eating it too:
Give Rondo of Blood another try. It's certainly slower paced than SotN (which is fucking amazing, love it!), but it's also MUCH more rewarding when you complete a level because of how HARD it is.

And if you're a Final Fantasy fan, just wait until later this year. Kingdom Hearts, baby.

@xxXX_Insanities_Birth_XXxx: I'm going to laugh because I assume you can't be serious.

Cloral

@Brian Crecente: Crecente, I think it might have been better if it read 'Sony's PSP Line-Up', so as to avoid confusion. I agree with Reeves, though-- the official PSP games have been less than stellar. However, I picked up a PSP1001 the other day from Gamestop and got five games-- Phantasy Star Portable, Star Ocean: Second Evolution, Ace Combat X, Liberty City Stories and Castlevania the Dracula X Chronicles. All these games are fantastic (though Rondo of Blood is a bit boring-- downloaded a game save so I could just play mobile SotN immediately, hah).

The third party line-up for the PSP is actually not too bad. I for one can't get into the Nintendo DS because most of the games lack a certain sort of depth, depth that I've become accustomed too since playing Final Fantasy on the Super Nintendo, all those years ago. All the games I purchased reflect that depth, and I'm extremely satisfied with them... now Sony just has to step up to the plate.

interim has his cake and is eating it too

@ShingoEX:
As I said elsewhere in this thread, developers wouldn't suddenly start developing dozens of new PSP games for no reason, with piracy being as bad as it is. They clearly know something we don't.

@Archaotic: "Torrent" being a nice, unintentional pun, since most of these UMDs are being pirated at a higher rate than they're being purchased.

And still, MH is only "one" game, and the amount of games being released for the system doesn't "fix" things. I figure you'd know that.

ShingoEX

@Azza: Here's some perspective for you, young man- I was 16 in 1997. HA!

Bialia ಠ_ಠ needs your AC fruit!

@Archaotic: Yeah, the first-party stuff for the PS3 has been and will be stellar, so I'm sure it's in reference to the PSP and how much they're working to change that handheld's software status.

sascha23

@ShingoEX:
The reason he only brought up Monster Hunter was because he was speaking at a Capcom event, and Monster Hunter Portable is one of Capcom's big games for the second half of this year.

Have you been payin' attention this past few weeks? The PSP is getting a TORRENT of new games this year. :P

1 title alone doesn't "rectify" the problems. He seriously expects us to buy that idea?

ShingoEX

@kawaiipandax: I learned something as well. I thought the same as you. Glad someone knew the answer.

Abel

congrats Kotaku.
yet another bait-n-switch like maneuver you pulled with the headline.

@Rebochan:
Square's refusal to TALK about the PS3 version of Last Remnant is telling. Not to mention the fact they're making a 360/PC Front Mission game, AGAIN with no mention of PS3. There's something suspicious about their actions this generation, even if you ignore Tri-Ace's stupidity. FF13 is something where they've committed so much time, money and marketing to the PS3 version by now that they HAVE to release it on that system, but aside from that and Versus, they have nothing announced at ALL, which doesn't bode well.

@Foxstar is in love with Kotaku's two Brians.:
Nintendo? Fight? Really? Square's giving Nintendo the scraps, with the exception of Dragon Quest, a series that really wouldn't benefit AT ALL from the PS3 or 360 architecture.

Microsoft is fighting hard, I'll give you that, but Nintendo's just sitting back with their arms crossed, laughing at the two of them as they fight with each other.

@Rebochan:Oh yes, I had forgotten about that. It's why we didn't have a PSX Mega Man for 29292929 years and why we didn't have RPG's for almost as long.

@Azza: ...you were 4 in 97?

....I hate you...so...much...

@Archaotic:Two things matter.

Install base.

Money.

Microsoft has to spend money to bring the games to build it's install base right now. Even with the damage done to the Playstation brand by the assorted group of idiots at Sony, even with a high price tag, the units move.

Microsoft is cheaper, but does not have it's legs yet. It's where Sony was back in 1995. For me this is all viable business tactics and in the end, if it saves SE enough money for them to bring out a follow up to Chocobo Tales, Front Mission or god forbid, finally a real follow up to Saga that isn't ass, then I win. No matter what, as I own all the current gen systems, I win.

But I like to see someone willing to fight and Microsoft and Nintendo have put in way more fight this gen then Sony.

@Azza: Take about 'unexperienced', it's supposed to be 'inexperienced'.

@offshore: Um...no it doesn't. That's total crap - Capcom was actually barred from the PS1 by Sony because they wished to continue making 2D games. It was several years before Sony finally backed down and let them develop for them. Their relationship isn't secure at all.

And Capcom has always been a console whore. They'll go wherever the audience is. They like their green wherever they can find it.

@Archaotic: If you want to get mad at anyone on PS3 support, get mad at tri Ace. They're the ones that announced 360 exclusives. Square announced a multi-play Last Remnant...that seems to have fallen in a hole, but it's more than tri Ace wished to do. Clearly Square still wants to support the PS3 or they wouldn't be, I don't know, developing an exclusive FFXIII title for it and selling Advent Children PS3s?

@Foxstar is in love with Kotaku's two Brians.:
I think Square should be concerned about a loss of mindshare and market share, though. A business wants their products to reach the highest amount of people possible, no? That was one of their excuses for FF13 going multiplat.

Seems a little disingenuous to make that excuse, then not follow through with it on your other games. Clearly, "the most people possible" only applies when a game is going to 360, eh?

@Archaotic:New IP rarely ever sells well. And given that up till 2 years ago Microsoft was a complete joke in Japan, I think again they've made amazing progress. Given it's likely Microsoft covered most of the cost of all of those new titles, why should they care? They didn't lose anything and they learned lessons.

Microsoft needs third parties right now more then Sony does because it's the third parties who will allow you to build your first party studios later on. Sony's biggest fault this gen was they should have been building first party studios back in 2003 when they ruled the roost so that loss of third parties wouldn't hurt so much. Sony only really got serious about first party development back in 2005 and it takes a long freaking time to birth a AAA producing first party studio when you didn't start with one.

@Foxstar is in love with Kotaku's two Brians.:
Yep. Piracy's a bitch. That's why I'm hoping everything I've been hearing behind closed doors about the next PSP is true, so piracy will start to lessen. It's a damn good handheld, and it's depressing to see so many people treating it like a candy store with a broken front window.

Clearly, though, with all the new game announcements over the last few weeks...developers know something we don't.

@Archaotic:The Wii verison has fees because Capcom has to run servers, but also because they like money. Nintendo's biggest failing, although understandably is they don't have server farms and a huge Xbox live set up, something that along with pushing along motion control development is going to cost them millions of dollars and partly where I'm sure a chunk of their income is going.

PSP is doing great system sales wise, but the attachment rate is shit. When only one game on your system has broken the 3 million mark when you've got a 50+ million install base, something's wrong.

@Foxstar is in love with Kotaku's two Brians.:
We'll see. I think Square's "We're king shit!" opinion is just as arrogant as what you're blasting Sony for right now. When every one of their new titles fails to crack 500k worldwide, there's a serious problem, especially if you look at the Japanese sales of multiplatform titles as of late.

Square should be looking at the sales of Yakuza 3, Resident Evil 5 and Advent Children Complete and frowning to themselves right about now. If they don't start supporting the PS3, then the mindshare they need to capture when FF13 DOES come out will be considerably less than it should be.

@Archaotic:FF7 was not impossible on the N64, but the development costs made it non-viable. I've got 25 years of game mags to thumb though and pretty much all the interviews at the time from all sorts of Sqauresoft people had the same tag line, it could be done on a cart, at least the FF7 they had in mind, but the costs made it such as they would have likely never broken even and carts were high as it was..no one was going to pay $100+ dollars for FF on PSone, nobody.

Sony came along, offered a system which a much cheaper format (And don't forget, Nintendo largely controlled cart prices) and yes, money and Square went for it.

SE's lack of support on the PS3 is largely due to Sony's hubris and SE's innate knowledge that they are the girl everyone wants to date. Microsoft has made huge, huge inroads with SE because of their approach, so I wager for SE upper management the money they lose on lack of multi platform releases is something they can bare and i'm sure that Microsoft has helped to make that clear because Microsoft is more willing to court SE then Sony is willing to keep them.

@joecolly: Yeah it is. I don't like that they did that.

@SlashZaku: Seriously, they're just asking for hits with that title. Kinda BS, not like Kotaku to pull that kinda thing.

either their expectations are really high or Reeves has finally grounded with reality

ithyphallus

@symphony_of_the_night: The headline is a summary, not bait. That's how headlines work, otherwise they would be called the story.

@xxXX_Insanities_Birth_XXxx: and that his gamertag features that zoomed in photo of himself that Kotaku usually use

@Foxstar is in love with Kotaku's two Brians.:
PSP's doing fine; especially in the case of Monster Hunter, which is a Japan-focused series. Sony's probably pissed that MH3 isn't on PS3, but I really don't think MH3 is going to do THAT well compared to Portable 3 REGARDLESS of the platforms.

MH is just a better-suited franchise for portable systems, especially considering the fact that the Wii version has recurring fees just to play online.

@DlllusionX: Clone or Clown?: Actually, Jumping Flash is my oldest PSX game. Oldest PS2 game is Fantavision.

Speaking of the opposite of not meeting expectations...

A couple weeks ago I finished cataloguing my video games using Gamepedia and I've got 79 PS2 games -- the oldest being Jumping Flash and the newest being Persona 4. I've also got 112 PSX games and 61 Dreamcast games among others.

@haran_elessar:
Well, it IS David Reeves, so if he said something stupid like that, I wouldn't put it past him. That man's more of a "stupid quote" machine than Peter Molyneux, Kaz Hirai and Ken Kutaragi put together.

@DragonSphere: I turned 16 last month. Forgive me if I seem a little 'out-there' or 'unexperienced' compared to ya'llllllllll.

@ShadowOdin is sad he missed Wyatt Cenac's visit to Sweden: I heard his 360 got a restraining order after he was acting creepy and kept trying to touch it.

xxXX_Insanities_Birth_XXxx

@Foxstar is in love with Kotaku's two Brians.:
They went to PS1 because the cartridge size for the N64 made it impossible to develop FF7, period. It wasn't about the money, it was about developing the game the way they wanted to.

I'm not really talking about FF13 here, either. I'm talking about the sudden and random decision of Square to release NO GAMES on the PS3 WHATSOEVER while the 360 gets what, 5? I realize Infinite Undiscovery was financed and owned by Microsoft, but why not go multiplatform for games like Star Ocean or the new Front Mission? The FF13 DEMO sold 300,000 copies in Japan on PS3. Square is leaving money on the table by going 360-only, and it's biting them in the ass.

Yea, I love Kotaku, but even I have to say the title was the old "bait and switch", was it not?

On topic, the PSP has been underutilized. I have both the PSP and DS lite. I have been a firm Sony supporter(of the product, not necessarily the company) , but I feel like the PSP could have been so much more,. at least there are some decent titles making their way to shelves this year.

PimpNinja24

@Black-Dog-Howls: I learned something today!

kawaiipandax

@Archaotic:They are. But Monster Hunter 3 is coming first. If the PSP was where it should be, that wouldn't be the case, at least not on a home console.

@Archaotic: Yeah the headline is misleading. They are only talking about their PSP first party support but the headline makes it seem as if Reeves said that Sony as whole PS3/PSP/PS2 hasn't met expectations.

@Archaotic: he is talking about the PSP line up.
The headline is just bait. Read the article :)

symphony_of_the_night

Never really was a fan of Sony's PlayStation until I recently got a PS2 and marveled at the games I missed for the past 9 years.

Zack Richart

@Archaotic:I won't ream Square over money hats because Square has always been about the money. FF7 went to the Playstation because it's development cost on the N64 was not worth it, compared to PS1.

FF13 didn't go multi platform so much because of Microsoft, but more because creating the software tools and graphical engine for it's trademark series on the PS3 cost SE so much money that they would have never made back the development costs on PS3 alone. And that's Sony's fault, for creating a beast of a system with a crappy SDK.

@Foxstar is in love with Kotaku's two Brians.:
They ARE making Monster Hunter Portable 3, you know...

And just be glad Reeves is gone. I know I am.

@kawaiipandax: Playstation started as its own division under Sony Music to keep from being completely associated with Sony as a whole. So technically he wouldn't be wrong saying he worked at Playstation.

Black-Dog-Howls

Title is a bit misleading. He's talking about first party PSP games, not just Sony games in general.

joecolly

@Azza: you were just 4 in '97? Sheesh... and I thought I was young.

@Foxstar is in love with Kotaku's two Brians.:
Not to mention if you're mentioning Microsoft moneyhats, Capcom's kind of an odd choice to bring up...Capcom's been as fair as they can be to the PS3 this gen.

SQUARE is the one that deserves reaming over moneyhats. :P

The man can not shut his fucking mouth for anything in the world and I don't know why. But maybe the reason the Sony Line-up for the PSP hasn't met expections was they were too busy trying to market the accursed machine as a Red-mage like media player from the start and priced it as such when the chosen format they wanted to use for the media suffered all the earmarks of one of Sony's typical attempted format wars.

When your attempting to be jack of all trades, your going to drop the ball somewhere and Sony dropped it twice, first games, then making sure that the games weren't so easy to get in order to make sure that Joe Gamer would pay for them instead of risking making a $299 paperweight. Failure in both of these areas crippled the system in such a fashion it's never recovered from.

The only real winner on the PSP was Capcom, which is now taking that and attempting to use it to make it more money..on a rival system.

@indyit:
The games Sony Computer Entertainment Japan has released thus far (on consoles) are Genji (we don't talk about Genji), Folklore, White Knight Chronicles, Demon's Souls, and Gran Turismo 5 Prologue, which is a fucking demo.

I agree though, he was talking about Sony's PSP lineup which was, until two months ago, looking pretty bleak for this year. They seem to be reviving it in a BIG way though.

Did he really say thet he works "at Playstation"? Does he not know the name of his company? Or is "Playstation" now some sort of abstract concept that one should work towards, like a life goal.

kawaiipandax

@offshore:Sony was their with their checkbook WAY before Microsoft. So hush.

@Archaotic: Speaking of SCEJ... what have they produced lately? is WKC a SCEJ game? Is Demon Souls theirs?

Anyhow I think this has been coyly left out to open debate and cause more of a stir... but I'm sure Reeves must have meant the PSP lineup.
I think the 1st party PSP-lineup through the years has been pretty good though... I don't own a PSP but there are many games I'd want to play on it (with quite a few of them being 1st party). I really want to try Patapon, looks awesome.

@offshore:
Technically, the relationship still exists...Capcom's never been 100% devoted to the Playstation brand, they always put games on other consoles. Dreamcast got a bunch of Capcom exclusives, and GameCube had the whole Resident Evil/Viewtiful Joe thing.

Their relationship was never as symbiotic as, say, Squaresoft and Sony were last gen.

Yo, Crecente! PlayStation, not Playstation.

You know Capcom's true lover is Sega.

jlarimore

THE FUCKING PLAYSTATION HAS BEEN OUT FOR FIFTEEN YEARS? :O

HOLY SHIT. I got one in '97 for my 4th birthday or something and that#s gone quickly >_<

@xxXX_Insanities_Birth_XXxx: He's such a 360 fanboy. Wheever he gets a RROD he buys two new.

@unangbangkay:
They've released, like, three games this generation compared to SCEA and SCEE doing nearly 10 each? SCEJ is a joke.

Hopefully Yoshida and Ueda can smack some sense into them before they become completely irrelevant.

@unangbangkay: Why should we?

@silentknome: Got you to click, didn't it?

@Archaotic:

Why shouldn't we count SCEJ?

Title is kind of 'eh' especially when he's talking about the PSP...

SlashZaku

what a misleading title....

silentknome

*slap* Your meant to say good things about playstation you xbot reeves you.

xxXX_Insanities_Birth_XXxx

"Reeves says that the relationship between Capcom and Playstation goes back to 1994, the year the Playstation launched."

...until MS came along with its chequebook...

offshore

He's talking about Sony's first-party efforts on PSP, right? Because it's pretty insane to say Sony hasn't been bringing the quality when it comes to PS3 first party releases.

...at least if you don't count SCEJ.

@Mr. Tambourine Man: I swear it did NOT say "PSP" before.

@ryangreen02: Yeah I guess you can call it second party although I've always been confused on what that means... but yeah I don't get it either... why isn't it out here??

@Archaotic: Forgot about Genji (with good reason I suppose) and Folklore seemed nice I guess... but yeah didn't warrant the buy for me (at least not from what the demo showed)... I used to love the stuff SCEJ provided and bought most of it. Guess I'm just going to twiddle my thumbs and wait for the next news on Team ICOs game.

@Cloral: The Reeves doesn't joke around.

xxXX_Insanities_Birth_XXxx

@Spaced33:
I ask myself that every day. I've ranted about it twice on OLC already; did one this morning, in fact. =/

[www.onelastcontinue.com]

It's actually pretty sad to see all of the potential that Sony has lost with the PSP as it is right now. Just picked mine up last Christmas, and i know this has been said a million times, but why aren't there more ps1 titles available?!?!?

Spaced33

@Foxstar is in love with Kotaku's two Brians.:
Sony and Microsoft together need to do it. All the money Microsoft's spending right now won't change the fact that people WANT to buy games on PS3 in Japan.

Microsoft should stop trying to kick Sony in the nuts, and instead work on developing more first party games, like Lost Odyssey, and making sure Ninety Nine Nights 2 doesn't suck. Maybe hire Itagaki to make them a new DMC-style action game. They NEED a first party.

@BlisteringOrange:I've kind of reached the 'We agree to disagree' point. My feelings are that if Microsoft was smart, they would be pouring billions into SE and other Japanese devs if they seriously want Japan. No less then at least 2 billion, maybe as much as 6.

@Altima NEO:Given that the homebrew scene spawned the massive piracy, Sony is and will never welcome homebrew now. Homebrew will never make Sony enough money for the trouble.

@Rebochan: tri ace working on a multi-plat. shooting RPG with sega.

Shouldn't Sqeenix be able to tell Tri ace what to do since, they're sort of like the little brother?

@Azza: "ya'llllllllll..." /facepalm. Besides that I guess I was 4 in '95 to add to the "I was four years old during this year..." discussion. Didn't get a system till '99 with the N64... :/

@ryangreen02:
I think what Sony needs to do is do exactly what Microsoft did last year. Focus a portion of their E3 presser, or another press conference early this year, entirely on JRPGs. Give a US release date for White Knight Chronicles and Tales of Vesperia and Demon's Souls. Announce Dark Cloud 3 or Wild ARMs 6. Just PUBLICIZE RPGs on the system, since a good chunk of PS3 owners bought the damn console thinking there'd be real JRPGs like Final Fantasy on it, and look where that's gotten them.

They could be doing so much more with the PSP.

Youve got this huge homebrew scene going with it, and yet Sony shuns it.

Sony, take your strengths and expand on it. You cant cripple Nintendo's empire by copying them, much in the same way the PSX succeeded by going against the grain Nintendo had set forth in the 80's.

Altima NEO

@Gaijin is a DIRTY word!:
As far as I can tell, the game was never officially dated, we just have retailers like GameStop giving "windows" for release.

The last English trailer for Dissidia still says "Summer 2009".

@Archaotic: I find it kind of suspicious that nobody is talking about the delay FF Dissidia got from June 09 to September 09. Wonder why they did that?

@Foxstar is in love with Kotaku's two Brians.: keep 'em coming guys! I'm eagerly awaiting the end of this discussion.

no seriously... i'm kinda leaning on the square not supporting ps3 as much argument.

@indyit: From what I've read about Demon's Souls, it is a 2nd party title at worst (From Software title). There isn't any excuse to not release it outside of the Asian regions (and as such, I continue to wait for a US release despite the English version existing).

SCEE and SCEA have been really carrying the PS3 this entire generation. Japan has been resting on its laurels while they continue to struggle in 3rd place. Demon's Souls is practically localized for the English-speaking regions of the world, so the reason they haven't released it officially in these territories is beyond me. Even on a smaller release, they would still profit from the game that is completed.

@Rebochan: lol.

it's still crazy to see people with a 90's birth date. mind-bottling i tell you.

@Azza: also, who the hell gets a game console for their 4th birthday?!?! when i was 4, i'm pretty sure the coolest thing i got was a "snorks" t-shirt.

@Gaijin is a DIRTY word!:
I don't know yet, you don't know yet, Crecente doesn't know yet. The only people that know are probably Sony's people, and the R&D heads for the major PSP-supporting third parties. Let's wait and see.

@interim has his cake and is eating it too:
Crisis Core is good. Unlike Dirge of Cerberus, it's a fun game AND the story is decent. Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep will probably be a better game altogether though.

Dissidia's fun too, I imported that a while back. Spent a LOT of time on it.

@Archaotic: I'll give it a try. I haven't heard anything about Crisis Core-- it was there on the shelf but I avoided it because it seemed like another attempt to cash in on FF7 and I'm sick of that IP.

interim has his cake and is eating it too

@Archaotic: Yeah I know but do you really think they're going to let us redeem our UMD purchases?

The only thing I can think of Sony doing is giving away a handful of free games (our choice) when they launch this thing. Otherwise, it'll be dead in the water.

@Foxstar is in love with Kotaku's two Brians.:
Well, as I said, they won't just drop UMD immediately. It'll be a slow trickle until UMD games fade out entirely. But we'll see. We still don't even know if the thing is real yet and everybody's concocting crazy doomsday scenarios in their head.

I say we should just be happy publishers are SUPPORTING the damn thing again.

@interim has his cake and is eating it too:
3 is decent, 4 is probably the worst in the series, and 5 started the series back on the up-slope.

Kinda like Suikoden, if you think about it. The PS1 entries were the series' best, the third iteration tried new things and met with mixed, but generally positive reactions...the fourth one went WAY out of left field, changed everything, and pissed everyone off, and the fifth tried to in some ways revive what the old games were such big fans of.

The PS2 remake of WA1 is awesome too, though the graphics are absolute shit by today's standards.

@Archaotic: I haven't played any of the Wild Arms games after 1 and 2, due to a friend's warning... am I missing out on anything? I don't know if anything can top 1 and 2, they're in my opinion the best all-around RPGs of all time.

interim has his cake and is eating it too

@Cloral: Have you seen Reeves's gamescore? It's through the roof. Talk about farming achievements.

@indyit:
They did change the article's title after a bit. It didn't say "PSP" at first. My dream is that Shuhei Yoshida has jump-started an SCEJ renaissance, and that we'll start seeing the fruits of his labors at E3 or TGS this year. Maybe a new Wild ARMs, Dark Cloud 3, Legend of Dragoon 2, a PSN sequel to Jumping Flash...

Just...something from Sony Japan. ANYTHING.

@Gaijin is a DIRTY word!:

Technologically speaking it would be easy enough to do...

1) Connect your old PSP to your computer or PS3 via USB cable.

2) Insert UMD of your choice.

3) Validate the UMD over the network.

4) Download a serially stamped digital copy of the UMD. The serial stamp would be a combination of your PSP serial number and the PS3/MAC address of your network card.

5) If the game is pirated it will be pirated with your serial numbers which are now attached to your PSN account.

Jordan Lund

@smuai: I have that exact same feeling whenever I hear about people born on or after the 90's... which is weird considering I was just born only a few years earlier in 87, but the 90's encapsulates like, my childhood memories and such, which still seem so recent to me too.

@smuai: I got a cowboy Barbie.

Didn't get my NES until Christmas of '87 (I think it was), and even then it was a gift to me AND my younger brother.

Kids these days. Spoiled rotten!

Bialia ಠ_ಠ needs your AC fruit!

@Bialia ಠ_ಠ needs your AC fruit!: right?!!

and for some reason i imagine burt reynolds with a cowboy barbie, which is... pretty funny. little scary, but overall funny.

@Archaotic: I meant that the overall number of his abilities was reduced by like, one-third. :(

interim has his cake and is eating it too

@interim has his cake and is eating it too:
I actually had Battle with Lord Blazer as my ringtone for a while. Jack's Fast Draws are...different in Alter Code F, but I wouldn't say they were murdered. They're just different. Cecilia is exactly the same as she was before, but Rudy no longer uses swords. Just his ARM, and his subweapons are now special ammo FOR said ARM.

The new characters are awesome, though, especially Zed. Zed is the man. Sadly, he's the last character you get. But he's still awesome!

@Archaotic: I heard in the remake, Jack's abilities get totally murdered. Is that true of the rest of the characters? Does the depth suffer? I may try and pick it up anyway, if I can find it. To be honest I never even knew it existed until recently, when I was reading the wikipedia article on the series.

Do you have the Rocking Heart album? If not, look up 'Windward Birds', 'Battle VS Lord Blazer', and 'There's Only One Family Named Schrodinger' on YouTube. Effing AMAZING remakes, you won't be disappointed.

interim has his cake and is eating it too

@Bubbleman! (poster formerly known as Gaijin): For the sake of argument, lets say that the rumor post by 1up nailed the next PSP. No UMD, but it will have onboard memory and, most importantly, THE CONTROL SCHEME WILL STAY THE SAME. No second analog, according to the rumor. That means the new software will be compatible with all flavors of PSP, even the Go! version. If this holds true, I don't see how any PSP owner is fucked. You won't have to upgrade to play current games, aside from getting a bigger mem stick to take the place of the UMD storage. As for UMD games: if you're not getting a PSP Go! then you got nothin to worry about.

If you do upgrade, then you probably will feel bad. Sony could do something great here and win a lot of kudos from its fans, by letting people transfer their UMD's to mem sticks. I've read ideas about store kiosks, but why not let the people do it themselves? PSP Media Manager could be enabled to let people copy their UMD games to their PC, then on to a mem stick in a PSP. Media Manager is free these days, and it would be way cheaper and easier fo Sony to do that than spend money on thousands of kiosks.

Then again, this debate could be pointless since no one knows what exactly the next PSP will have.

@the7k: Oh yeah. I should know that.

@Rebochan: Hate me? Why?

@smuai: It was a shared present. I have gamed since the age of three. I was better at Mega Man when I was six, as opposed to now, ten years later >_<

@Bialia ಠ_ಠ needs your AC fruit!: Don't you dare get the impression I'm spoilt. I was an only child at the time and I'm anything but an only child now.

Was the fact that he said Monster Hunter Unite sold 3 million copies in Japan a shameless plug since thats not what its called in Japan?
Hunter Rank 9 here so I'm not dissing, I freakin love MH, just thought it was funny.