Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 08:31, 15 November 2006

PlayStation Portable

File:Sony PSP Logo.svg
File:Psp1.jpg
Manufacturer	Sony
Type	Handheld game console
Generation	Seventh generation era
Lifespan	December 12, 2004 March 24, 2005 May 2, 2005 September 1, 2005 September 1, 2005
Units sold	22.94 million units shipped
Media	UMD
CPU	MIPS R4000-based; clocked from 1 to 333 MHz
Storage	Memory Stick PRO Duo
Connectivity	Wi-Fi (802.11b), IrDA
Online services	Infrastructure and Ad-hoc
Best-selling game	Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories

The PlayStation Portable (officially abbreviated as PSP) is a handheld game console released and manufactured by Sony Computer Entertainment. Its development was first announced during E³ 2003, and it was officially unveiled on May 11, 2004 at a Sony press conference before E³ 2004. The system was released in Japan on December 12, 2004, the United States and Canada on March 24, 2005 and in Europe and Australia on September 1, 2005. The PlayStation Portable offers the ability to play video games, watch videos, listen to music, view photos, as well as Internet browsing functionality.

Variations and accessories

The PlayStation Portable is available as part of the Value Pack or Core Pack, and in most territories it is also available as part of a Giga Pack and an Entertainment Pack. In Japan a base unit package or Core Pack was available at launch and was later released in North America and Europe. The Core Pack contains the console, a battery, and an AC adapter. The Core Pack retails for USD $199, CDN $229.99, EUR €199, AUD $329 and GBP £149.99. The Value Pack contains everything the core does, as well as a 32 MB Memory Stick Pro Duo, earphones with remote control, a slip-case, a wrist strap, and a Sampler Disc (in some territories). The Value Pack retails for USD $249.99, CDN $229.99, GBP £179.99, JPY ¥26,040, SGD $455.00, EUR €209, AUD $399.00 and NZD $398.00. In some areas, the Value Pack has been superseded by the Entertainment Pack, which also contains a copy of ATV Offroad Fury: Blazin' Trails, the UMD movie Lords of Dogtown, and a 1 GB Memory Stick Pro Duo in place of the 32 MB one offered in the Value Pack. The Giga Pack is similar to the value pack, except the Memory Stick Pro Duo is upped to 1 GB, and includes a USB Cable and stand. The Giga Pack retails for JPY ¥29,800, USD $299, CDN $349, and GBP £214. The Giga Pack is still available in all territories except North America, as the deal was based on a special offer that ended after the 2005 holiday season. Various other packages also exist.

Playstation Portable is currently available in three colors: black, white, and pink. The white variation is available in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Singapore, Hong Kong, Australia, and Europe, while the pink variation is exclusively available in Europe. Silver and metallic blue variations are set to release on 14 December and 21 December respectively in Japan exclusively.

Optional accessories offered by Sony include the PlayStation Portable headset, carrying case, extended-life 2200 mAh battery, headphones with remote control, battery charger, car adapter, accessories pouch and cleaning cloth, AC adapter, and system pouch and wrist strap.

Features

Games

Controls

Despite its movie and music playback capabilities, the PlayStation Portable has primarily gaming-oriented controls (as opposed to the controls typical to television remotes or MP3 players): two shoulder buttons, the PlayStation face buttons (triangle, circle, cross, square), start and select buttons, a digital 4-directional pad, and an analog stick. There is also a row of secondary controls along the underside of the screen, for controlling volume, music settings (either switching the audio off and on in games or selecting different equalizer presets), screen brightness, and accessing the system's main menu.

The PlayStation Portable's analog stick, often referred to as the analog "nub", is a circular disc which slides rather than tilts. The PlayStation Portable's analog stick can also be easily removed and replaced with a third party stick.

Demos

Demos for commercial Playstation Portable games can be downloaded and booted directly from the Memory Stick Duo. Demos are also sometimes issued in UMD format mailed out to Playstation Underground members or packed with Official Playstation Magazine.

Greatest Hits titles

During E3 2006, Sony Computer Entertainment America announced that the Greatest Hits range of budget titles were to be extended to the PSP system. On July 25, 2006, Sony CEA released the first batch of Greatest Hits titles. The PSP Greatest Hits lineup consist of games that have sold 250,000 copies or more and have been out for 9 months. Every PSP game in this lineup will retail for $19.99 each.

Sony Computer Entertainment Europe announced at around the same time the availability of a number of titles under the Platinum range for €24.99 each in the Eurozone and £19.99 in the UK.

Multimedia and codecs

PlayStation Portable supports a number of multimedia codecs, including MP3, WMA, and ATRAC3 for audio, along with several MPEG4 video formats. With reasonable video and audio bit-rate settings (a resolution of 320×240, a video bit rate of 500 Kb per second, and an audio sampling rate of 22050 KHz) a 22 minute video file is roughly 55 MB, enough to fit on a Memory Stick Duo as small as a 128 MB. At the same rate, a hundred-minute feature film can fit on a 256 MB Memory Stick. There are various software applications and hardware devices specifically designed for various PlayStation Portable's media-centric applications.

Many movie files, both free-to-distribute and pirated, have been encoded for the PlayStation Portable and are available on the Internet. Game and movie trailers are increasingly available, even from the studio's official site.

Camera and GPS

A camera and GPS attachment were first announced for the PSP in March 2006. More details are set to be released during Tokyo Game Show 2006.

The GPS receiver will feature support for GPS-enabled games such as a projected re-release or update of Hot Shot Golf, as well in Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops. The GPS is set to be priced around ¥6,000, appx. $54 USD.

The “Chotto Shot” (Quick Shot) camera add-on will support a new video and VoIP chat service, as well as photo taking. The camera was released in Japan in early November 2006 for around ¥5,000, appx. $44 USD

Wireless networking

The PlayStation Portable can connect to a wireless network through Wi-Fi IEEE 802.11b which allows it to surf the web or connect to other PlayStation Portable units for multiplayer gaming world-wide. Use of wireless network features increases the power consumption and lowers the battery life of the system by 30%.

Firmware 2.00 was released on July 27, 2005 for Japanese PlayStation Portables, and August 24, 2005 for North American PlayStation Portables. The update included a web browser and support for connecting to networks with WPA and WEP encryption.

Gamesharing

Some titles for the PlayStation Portable support a feature dubbed "gamesharing", which facilitates a limited set of multiplayer features between two PlayStation Portables with only one copy of the game UMD. A reduced version of the game being shared is transferred to the PlayStation Portable without a UMD via the PlayStation Portable's Wi-Fi connection, whereupon it is loaded into RAM and runs.

Such "gameshare versions" of titles usually have their feature set reduced because of technical limitations. This is mainly due to transfer times since data for the game must be transferred to the second PlayStation Portable wirelessly, at a rate of 11 megabits per second. Also, since the game data is stored in the PlayStation Portable's RAM, there is a storage limit of 32 MB.

Ad-hoc networks

Ad-hoc wireless networking allows for up to 16 PlayStation Portables within range to communicate directly to each other (typically for multiplayer gaming). One unit acts as the host for a game, which is available to other PlayStation Portable units within that system's range, and appears in a list when the client PlayStation Portable searches for available hosts. Hosting a game in this manner increases power consumption and reduces battery life by as much as thirty-five percent, depending on the complexity of data transfer. With the update of 2.00 or higher the PlayStation Portable can use the Ad-Hoc technology to digitally send pictures from one PlayStation Portable to another by use of the "send" and "receive" functions that appear in the "PHOTO" menu.

Infrastructure networks

The PlayStation Portable's main menu allows the user to configure the system for use across the Internet or an intranet via a wireless connection, known as infrastructure mode. The PlayStation Portable's menu can recognize protected and non-protected wireless networks within its range.

Use of infrastructure networks in PlayStation Portable software began with a small number of titles at the U.S. launch, supporting online play. South Korean PlayStation Portables have shipped with software providing web browsing and multimedia streaming features, but only through company-owned Wi-Fi hotspots, and with a monthly fee.

Sony's Location-Free Player allows users to watch television on their PlayStation Portable over the Internet. Through the Location-Free Player, users can view and control their TV from anywhere they have access to a wireless network.

Infrared

The PlayStation Portable features an IrDA port located on the top left of the device; however this is not currently used by any games, or any system features.

Design and specifications

Technical specifications

The PlayStation Portable was designed by Shin'ichi Ogasawara for the Sony Computer Entertainment company. Early models were made in Japan but in order to cut costs, Sony has farmed out PlayStation Portable production to non Japanese manufacturers, mainly in China.

The unit measures 170 mm (6.7 in) in length, 74 mm (2.9 in) in width, and 23 mm (0.9 in) in depth, and has a mass of 280 grams (a weight of 0.62 lbs) including the battery. The TFT LCD screen measures 110 mm (4.3 in) diagonal with a 16:9 ratio and sports a 480×272 pixel resolution capable of 16.77 million colors.

The PlayStation Portable's main microprocessor is a multifunction device that includes a MIPS R4000-based CPU, hardware for multimedia decoding (such as H.264), as well as a vector unit dubbed "Virtual Mobile Engine". The MIPS CPU core is globally clocked between 1 and 333 MHz. During the 2005 GDC, Sony revealed that it had capped the PlayStation Portable's CPU clock at 222 MHz in software. Its reasons for doing so are unknown, but are the subject of some speculation. Various homebrew tools enable users to operate at 333 MHz, generally leading to a higher framerate at the expense of battery life.

The system has 32 MiB main RAM and 4 MiB embedded DRAM. There is no memory management unit for the CPU. No evidence of a TLB has been found to date. The Coprocessor 0 that normally manages the TLB-based MMU seems to be a custom effort by Sony and has no integrated memory.

The 166 MHz graphics chip has 2 MiB embedded memory and through its 512 bit interface provides hardware polygon and NURBS rendering, hardware directional lighting, clipping, environment projection and texture mapping, texture compression and tessellation, fogging, alpha blending, depth and stencil tests, vertex blending for morphing effects, and dithering, all in 16 or 32 bit colour, along with handling image output. Specifications state that the PlayStation Portable is capable of rendering 33 million flat-shaded polygons per second, with a 664 million pixel per second fill rate.

Unlike Sony's PlayStation 2 console, the GPU (PS2 Vector Unit equivalent) is not programmable, meaning that many effects that the PS2 can resolve in hardware must be implemented in software on the PlayStation Portable. Nonetheless, the implementation of a GPU in the PlayStation Portable is still a significant technological advance, in that it implements robust hardware-rendering for 3D graphics in the handheld market. The PlayStation Portable was preceded in this regard by the Tapwave Zodiac and the Nintendo DS.

Interface

The PlayStation Portable's main menu interface is the "Cross Media Bar" (XMB) used by recent Sony TVs, the PSX (DVR) hardware, and the upcoming PS3. It consists of a horizontal sequence of icons (Settings, Photo, Music, Video, Games, and Network which, when highlighted, show a vertical sequence of sub-icons (for example, selecting Games allows the memory stick or a UMD to be selected).

The main menu system allows the user to, amongst other things, adjust settings such as date, time, and the PlayStation Portable's nickname for wireless networking, play video or audio files from the memory stick, load games or movie UMDs, check on estimated battery life, and set the PlayStation Portable into a "link mode" which makes the inserted memory stick available to a PC via USB. The XMB may be accessed at any time in a game by pressing the "Home" button on the console.

The PlayStation Portable's default background colour is defaulted to change depending on the current month of the year, as follows:

• January – Silver
• February – Yellow
• March – Green
• April – Pink
• May – Dark Green
• June – Purple
• July – Aqua
• August – Blue
• September – Violet
• October – Gold
• November – Light Brown
• December – Red

Firmware 2.00 and greater allows the user to manually pick a color theme (though one can still set it to change color by month) or specify a background image from any stored photo on the PlayStation Portable memory stick. A variety of homebrew programs allow users of older firmwares to change the PlayStation Portable's background image but only of a limited dimension.

Firmware

Each PlayStation Portable runs a particular version of the PSP firmware, which comprises the device's operating system and additional core functionality. Firmware updates can be obtained in three ways:

• Direct download to the PSP over Wi-Fi. This can be performed by choosing "Settings", "Network Update" from the XMB.
• Download to a PC, then transfer to the PSP via a USB cable or Memory Stick.
• Included on the UMD of some games. These games may not run with earlier firmware than the version on their UMD.

While firmware updates can be used with consoles from any region, Sony recommends only downloading firmware updates released for the region corresponding to the system's place of purchase. Firmware updates have added various features including a web browser, Adobe flash support, additional codecs for images, audio, and video, as well as security against various exploits and vulnerabilities. The current firmware version is 2.82.

One of the possible reasons for an increase in firmware updates is to prevent homebrew programs for the PlayStation Portable from being executed. These programs are often harmless home-made games and applications which might add new functionality to the PSP, although they include ISO loaders, which allow users to run pirated PSP games, and emulators for older systems, such as Nintendo or Sega consoles.

Homebrew development

In May 2005, it was found that PlayStation Portables using the 1.00 version of the firmware (meaning original, first launch Japanese-only PlayStation Portables) could execute unsigned code. What this meant in practice was that these PlayStation Portables could run homebrew software, as the mechanism for checking to make sure that software has been approved by Sony had not yet been activated. Later exploits have allowed for PlayStation Portables using later versions of the firmware to run homebrew applications, and development of both new exploits to bypass restrictions and new restrictions to limit unauthorized programs is ongoing.

Controversial Ad campaign

• Sony admitted in late 2005 to hiring graffiti artists to spray paint advertisements for the PSP in seven major U.S. cities including New York City, Philadelphia, and San Francisco. The mayor of Philadelphia has filed a cease and desist order and may file a criminal complaint. According to Sony, they are paying businesses and building owners for the right to graffiti their walls.

• News spread on in July 2006 of a billboard advertisement released in the Netherlands which depicted a white woman holding a black woman by the jaw, saying "PlayStation Portable White is coming." Some found this to be racially charged due to the portrayal of a white woman subjugating a black woman. Two other similar advertisements also existed, one had the two women facing each other on equal footing in fighting stances, while the other had the black woman in a dominant position on top of the white woman. Sony claimed that the purpose of the advertisements were to contrast the white and black versions of its game console available for sale. These ads were never released in the rest of the world, and were pulled from the Netherlands after the controversy was raised.

Notes and references

1. "Cumulative Production Shipments of Hardware / PSP® (PlayStation®Portable)". Sony. Retrieved 2006-10-26.
2. Jeff Haynes (March 15, 2006). "PlayStation Portable Price Lowered to $199:New basic bundle for Sony handheld due later this month". IGN.
3. Chris Roper (March 14, 2006). "PS Biz Brief 06: New PlayStation Portable Package, Pricing, More: US and Europe to see reduced-cost packages; more white PlayStation Portables in Japan". IGN.
4. "2 nouvelles couleurs pour la PSP !". Kingplayer. Retrieved 2006-11-04.
5. "SCEA announces that PSP Greatest Hits are available for purchase". SCEA. Retrieved 2006-08-04.
6. "Online-enabled PlayStation Portable to hit Korea in May". Gamespot. March 28, 2005.
7. Mark Hachman. "Sony Details PlayStation Portable Chip Specs". Extreme Tech. Retrieved 2006-03-18.
8. "Sony releases anti-piracy PSP update". The Inquirer. October 3, 2005.
9. "Game Boy emulator for the PSP". Engadget. Retrieved 2006-09-09.
10. Sony Draws Ire With PSP Graffiti
11. Owen Thomas and Oliver Ryan (July 05, 2006). "Sony PSP ads spark cries of racism". CNN. Retrieved 2006-07-31. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)

External links

Official sites

• Official PlayStation Portable website (Europe)
• Official PlayStation Portable website (US)
• SCEA PSP Specifications press release

Unofficial sites

• PSP on 1up.com
• PSP on IGN
• PSP on GameSpot

Reviews

• Sony PSP As Personal Media Player – Detailed review on MP3 Newswire focused on the PlayStation Portable's movie and audio abilities
• Sony PSP Handheld Entertainment System – In-depth 8-pages review, Ars Technica, 28 March 2005
• Sony PSP: One year on – An in-depth review of the PSP's first 12 months in Europe, Pocket Gamer, 4 September 2006

• Sony consoles
• Handheld game consoles
• PlayStation Portable
• 2004 introductions