Death of UMD Mistaken for PSP2

A PSP2 denial with a twist

Posted by Staff
SPOnG loves PSP lifestyle shots more than any other hardware lifestyle shots.
SPOnG loves PSP lifestyle shots more than any other hardware lifestyle shots.
John Koller, director of hardware marketing for Sony Computer Entertainment America, has waded into the fray surrounding the rumoured PSP2. It's nonsense, he says, joining Sony Computer Entertainment Europe's president, David Reeves, in the denial of such a handheld's existence. What's more interesting is his assertion of how the PSP2 rumour came about.

Silicon Alley Insider spoke with Koller and reports that, "Sony is pushing developers away from its 'Universal Media Discs' and towards digital distribution of games via the PSP store. Someone misinterpreted the new push as 'PSP2' development, Koller said."

So there you have it. Not only is Sony making its first-party games available for download simultaneously with the UMD launch (as announced for Japan at TGS), it's actively driving development towards digital distribution. UMD can not be long for this world.

Koller also noted that Sony is aware of female avatars getting sex-pestered in PlayStation Home (see video below) and that the company is working on its moderation processes. "There's still a few kinks to be worked out", he said, referring to Home's beta status. "This is something we look to solve immediately."

We are going to be fascinated to see how this form of interaction between people pretending to be ladies and people pretending to be gentleman can be sorted out with 'Moderation'.

The video below apparently features "Sex 'Pests" in Home - aka, people dancing around a bit being filmed by someone who is 'not gay'. Frankly, we're more worried about the chap who made the vid.


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Comments

lazystyle 18 Dec 2008 12:00
1/3
I see Sony hasn't bothered with any collision detection or correction in Home!!!
config 18 Dec 2008 12:56
2/3
Wrong.

There is *some* collision detection AND *some* correction, but it's just not worth doing it fully for this kind of experience. Imagine you're stood next to an avatar that starts to do the body pop. What do you want it to do? Move your avatar or stop the other one from body poppin?

With a crowd, the logistics of calculating each avatar's boundary and how it affects surrounding avatars, and how their reactions affect their neighbours, and so on - then communicating the effects of this back to all the connection clients so they stay in sync - it's a huge undertaking for what? It wouldn't bring anything worthwhile to the experience, so why bother?

If this were a game I'd say it's an issue, and let's face it most games don't do it properly even with scripted NPCs and a single "free mind". How many times in games have you seen character arms, legs, even bodies disappear into walls? For something like Home it's just not an issue. I'd rather have more people in an area that could intersect than fewer with full collision detection and compensation.
mrAnthony 18 Dec 2008 15:42
3/3
i went on home for the first and so far last time, the other day.

and yeah, people dancing around girls everywhere. so weird. but i wouldn't call them pests. the girls were dancing too, they were loving it.

and:

"There's still a few kinks to be worked out"

surely the wrong wording when talking about sex pests.
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