Looks like Sony’s attempt to muscle in on Nintendo’s dominance in the hand-held gaming market will be delayed until early 2005.
Sony delays launch of PSP – Feb. 25, 2004
Sony has informed publishers, developers and retailers that while it still plans to launch its handheld gaming and entertainment device in Japan this holiday season, the PSP will not hit shelves in North America or Europe until calendar year 2005.
“The reason we pushed it out here is we wanted to be sure there’s a reasonable amount of software titles to launch with hardware,” said Teresa Weaver, a spokesperson for Sony Computer Entertainment.
This doesn’t come as a surprise to veteran gamers. New hardware from the Japanese makers is traditionally released in Japan first and a world-wide simultaneous launch held the specter of shortages if the unit is as popular as Sony is hoping it will be. As it stands Sony has had problems with shortages with hardware in the past under the staggered method traditionally used due to high demand so this is probably a wise move on their part.
Cool. A whole new platform of games to translate.
Bring it on…
Great blog you’ve got there Zach. Very fascinating to someone like me who once contemplated trying to immigrate to Japan. I’ll be a frequent visitor to your site and I’ve added you to my blogroll.
He he he…. we’ll see about the psp.. it’s gonna suck bigtime.. and it gets very hot when you play games on it. And the batteries drain really fast. But then again, sony said that the PSP never was intended for portable use. It’s used at home, just a little more freely than the ps2. And you gotta be real close to a power-source too.
While it may be true that the PSP gets hot when in use and may have a short battery life, last I read neither of these possibilities has been confirmed by anyone. If that’s the worst of its problems, though, then that’s hardly enough to say it’ll suck.
I’d hold off on making statements about the PSP’s battery-life or heat issues until there’s some good reason to do so. Taking idle speculation as fact is rarely a good idea.
do u know the exact release date for the PSP in the U.S.
Nope. It hasn’t been announced yet.
My wife is Japanese and her family is in Japan so I can always buy stuff from Japan.
Do u know some of the first games to come out for the PSP?