First strong western PSP pricing talk emerges

And of course, according to exchangerate.com $200 is equal to £106.99 - meaning it's almost the same as the Japanese price. Good plan. Unfortunately for them, the DS will have had a few months to build up a US audience by "before March". Time will tell.

Advice for all armchair analysts, particularly the ones that assumed Sony would price themselves out of the market. Never underestimate Sony's understanding of how crucial the US launch date and price is. If they hadn't capitalised on Sega's huge Saturn screw-up back in 1995, we may not have had Sony as a console manufacturer by this point.

Another thing to remember is that by and large, launches mean squat. Sony hugely bungled the PS2 launch - an event that barely any of the millions of PS2 owners are likely to remember now. In contrast, the Dreamcast's US launch was record-breaking.

Any console launch can go either way, but because this is a hand held system so different variables come into play that don't come up with home consoles (eg: Battery life, quality of hand held games, correct pricing).

For many PSPs iPod esque cool factor will be enough for them to purchase, but the very nature of portability is to sometimes to try things not possible on a home format. This is something Nintendo do well regardless of how many polygons can be pushed (kirby tilt games etc). Perhaps this is why DS is shifting so much.

Regardless of PSPs lovely graphics and looks I feel the DS will always have the edge over PSP because of it's interface and the type of game it will allow. We've had years of lovely graphical games and after a while people can sort the wheat from the chaff, gameplay wise included. Big question is will second and third parties support both equally or favour one over another?

Saying all this it's still early days yet but we should have a better idea by E3 time. Speaking of summer I hope that both hand helds sales pick up a little at what is usually a very quiet time of the year for games. PSP still is gonna be expensive in the u.k, but will that play in it's favour to older gamers (remember iPod cost 300+ pounds, still sells and wasn't the first mp3 player at all, it was the first to do an mp3 player well) ?. Either way I'm not gonna underestimate Sony or Nintendo no matter how forked my tongue can be when mentioning them.

That's not strong pricing talk. Strong pricing talk would be

"We're going to charge $nn.xx for our fricking console, whether you like it or not, and there isn't one damned thing you and anybody's army can do about it."

Continuing "If you don't like our pricing strategy, you can cut off your own arms, using the vestigial prehensile capabilities of your toes,and a very sharp knife, and stick them up your rectum"

That's strong pricing talk.

I can't agree with you there. I think that they'll appeal to different sections of the gaming community, but while the DS may have the edge in certain areas, the PSP multimedia capabilities mean that it will always have the edge for me.



It would be easy to say look at the PS2 and the GameCube for your answer here. But that wouldn't be fair or accurate. Nintendo haved the upper hand when it comes to developer relationships in the portable market.



I think May will still be too early to tell for PSP. Sure we'll have seen if it managed a big initial sell-in... but I think we won't know if it's realy doing OK until this time next year. And by then, we'll know if Gizmondo is going to be a player or a N-Gage like travesty.

I have both a PSP and DS, and kind of prefer the PSP at the moment. I have Ridge Racers and Lumines for PSP, and Warioware for the DS.

Warioware is the perfect game for the DS, but I briefly owned Band Brothers (before selling it) and didn't like it at all - it gave me a very bad impression of the machine, since it does not make good use of the touch screen, and most of the input uses the uncomfortable dpad and buttons. Hopefully there will be plenty of original games that use the touch screen instead of the standard buttons.

I found that the silver part of the DS shell scratches pretty easily too.

The PSP does seem quite delicate, and I'm worried about the screen, but there is such a difference in apparent quality between DS and PSP for the £30 extra you pay for the PSP. The PSP controls are a good size and nicely positioned (bar the thumb nub thing), and the screen is so much better than the (perfectly good) DS screens. Mind you, my PSP screen does have a dark spot and a dead pixel on it >:(

I worry that the DS will get the wrong kind of advertising in Europe, confusing many people as to what it can do exactly (just show people warioware being played for f**ks sake!!) and as a consequence, won't enjoy the success of the GBA.

A bit off topic, but are any of you UK PSP owners? I just brought one back from Japan and don't know if I can use the charger without a voltage converter. The charger does say 100-240volts 50/60 hz on it, but I'm a bit scared of plugging it in and f**king up the PSP.

I have the same problem with the DS - can I use a UK GBA SP charger (I don't have one, but someone at work mentioned that he had heard that it was possible) Can any of you guys help?

Plug it in, it works fine.



Now, I have taken less interest in the office DS, but I was told by Dyne that, yes, it uses a GBA-SP adaptor happily. So if it explodes, blame him. But it won't.

Gonna steal this quote from another site:

If you use an American adapter with a DS from another country (doesn't matter which one) and try to plug it in a European plug you will fry it. That is because the plug supplies 220 V over the 110 V (US) that the adapter takes. However, if you use a European adapter with a DS from anywhere, it charges okay, because the input from the plug is the same as the adapter can take (220 V).

Basically if you dont live in Europe you shouldnt worry to much, but you shouldnt have any problems regardless because your using a Euro adapter.

At the end of the day, just look at the details on the power brick.

There should be an input voltage spec - it's usually preceded by a symbol which looks a bit like this: ~
If it reads 110 - 240, then its universal and will work on any voltage around the world. It it's just 110, you're going to blow the arse off it if you use it in the UK!

Here's a list of worldwide voltages.

You can buy 240-110 step-down converter, which you plug in to a 240 volt UK socket and it will kick out 110 volt. Eurobatteries sells a selection of converters.
N.B. make sure the converter can handle more power than that stated on the power brick of your PSP or DS.

I have had a DS for sometime now and i can tell you that the uk sp chargers work fine. I bought one from GAME (their own brand one) for £6.99 and it works totally fine.

Ack. Game's evil own-brand stuff sucks, IMO. I had one of their PS2 remote controls which broke due to its cheap manufacture/materials.
That and the fact that they no longer offer buyers a choice of any other brands of thrid-party periphs.

The company is haemorrhaging money because its crap, not because of some PS2 shortage. :)

Gamers have long been clued up to the fact that, by shopping online, you're pretty much guaranteed a £10 saving on games. And non-gaming parents are getting more and more Internet savvy. Bye bye GAME :-)

The thing that annoys me about GAME (apart form ripping off ill-informed young children on preowns) is the way they sell most of their games on their website for £10 less as well but wont meet the price in store. Like they are a different company or something.

Recently though a new HMV store opened close to me and i have to say that they are probably the worst case of videogame pricing on the high street. They still have two to three year old GC games on the shelves for £39.99. Im sure they dont make much game sales these days.