Gaming PSP: Did piracy kill it, or was it just a bad console?

[Foxi4]

The N64 really didn't do as well as people think. About a third of the sales of the Playstation and it has a serious lack of games. If it wasn't for OoT and SM64 it'd easily go down as the worst Nintendo console to date (not counting oddballs like Virtual Boy).

I have to agree with you on this one, I sincerely don't understand the popularity this console has nowadays. Nintendo 64 didn't really have long-lasting appeal, neither did it age well. The systems has a whole 387 games in its library, which is practically a spec of dust compared 2418 PlayStation titles. To make things worse, there really aren't all that many memorable titles in it. Developers didn't want to program for the system, and had good reasons not to - the high manufacturing costs of the medium combined with its small capacity, general limitations of the software development kit, low sales of the system... It was a developer's as well as a publisher's nightmare, really. It's interesting how everyone seems to have fond memories of the system and barely anyone actually had it at the time - it's Nintendo's equivalent of the Sega Saturn... Actually, the Saturn has a larger library. The Saturn. That should tell you all you need to know.

 

[Rydian]

People grew up with the system.

 

[FireGrey]

PSP was saved by piracy.
The main reason most people get a PSP is because of the homebrew and piracy capabilities

 

[Filipe C Bello dos Santos]

PSP was saved by piracy.
The main reason most people get a PSP is because of the homebrew and piracy capabilities

I think the same. If wasn't for the CFW, PSP will not sell too well, there's a lot of games that i want to play on psp just to try the game, but it's not good enough for buying it.

 

[Foxi4]

PSP was saved by piracy.
The main reason most people get a PSP is because of the homebrew and piracy capabilities

There are literally no statistics to prove or disprove this statement, thus we must assume it is false. I could say the same thing about the Wii, and yet there were only 0,5 million logged Homebrew Channel installations, suggesting that the pirates were a vast minority of the overall userbase.

 

[Guild McCommunist]

There are literally no statistics to prove or disprove this statement, thus we must assume it is false. I could say the same thing about the Wii, and yet there were only 0,5 million logged Homebrew Channel installations, suggesting that the pirates were a vast minority of the overall userbase.

People bought the PSP because it had good games. When good games came out in Japan, the PSP went up in sales.

The whole assumption that hacking/piracy will instantly boost system sales is a bit silly since there's really no clear correlation between the two. When the PS3 jailbreak came out I don't remember seeing a skyrocket in PS3 sales. Same with the Wii, Xbox 360, DS, etc.

 

[Filipe C Bello dos Santos]

You guys should see what piracy did to ps2 in Brazil, the stores still sell them and you can buy pirate copies for about U$2,50.

 

[RodrigoDavy]

I have to agree with you on this one, I sincerely don't understand the popularity this console has nowadays. Nintendo 64 didn't really have long-lasting appeal, neither did it age well. The systems has a whole 387 games in its library, which is practically a spec of dust compared 2418 PlayStation titles. To make things worse, there really aren't all that many memorable titles in it. Developers didn't want to program for the system, and had good reasons not to - the high manufacturing costs of the medium combined with its small capacity, general limitations of the software development kit, low sales of the system... It was a developer's as well as a publisher's nightmare, really. It's interesting how everyone seems to have fond memories of the system and barely anyone actually had it at the time - it's Nintendo's equivalent of the Sega Saturn... Actually, the Saturn has a larger library. The Saturn. That should tell you all you need to know.

I actually have many friends who had a N64, even though way more people had a PS1. (Never seen a Saturn though)
The n64 is not without merit as you say, it had better graphics, 4 controllers port, an analog stick, a rumble pak. The analog stick and rumble pak were adopted by Sony later but many PS1 games lacked support for it. And the n64 does have many great titles, even though they are mostly first and second party's.
Maybe one of the main reasons people have fond memories of it is also due to emulation and the ROM size being small even helped people with slow internet at the time N64 emulation was possible. I mean, even today, the N64 is the most powerful system I can run decently in my computer.

EDIT: I owned a PS1 at the time and loved it, so I am not talking as a fanboy. But even I must admit I can't choose which is the better system between the PS1 and N64.
EDIT2: Oops! Sorry for off-topic post...
EDIT3: The Saturn was badly designed so it was pretty difficult to make games for it (many times developers had to use assembly rather than C)

 

[Foxi4]

The Saturn was badly designed so it was pretty difficult to make games for it (many times developers had to use assembly rather than C)

And the N64 had the same issue - it was incredibly badly designed.

Specs-wise, it was better than the PlayStation, but this was capped by its overall built - for example, each texture was capped to 4kb, effectively meaning that to properly texture without blurring, you needed to use several layers of textures (Conker's Bad Day), which is why games opted to use shading instead.

Another issue was the shared RAM memory, which works fine and dandy on paper, but in reality can greatly delay access times due to high latency and using DMA copying from Main RAM was not an option, nearly nullifying the benefits of having a cartridge medium and causing graphical pop-in as shown in for example Turok and its despicable draw distance. Some designers were ingenious enough to include texture streaming straight from the cartridge to avoid the trainwreck of the built-in system (Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine), but that's just crude busy work.

The cartridge size was another limit - even at that time, 64 Megabytes (512Mbit) just wasn't enough for a full-feature game, which is why N64 games often have to use crude codecs for FMV's or lack FMV's altogether, as they take up a lot of space - instead, in-game cutscenes were used. The forementioned textures more often than not, even with trilinear filtering, looked blurred due to space conservation. A game that takes up one CD would have to be on over 10 cartridges to be a 1 to 1 port, and cartridges were much more expensive than CD's.

It's also worth mentioning that at the time, programmers weren't used to coding for a 64-bit platform yet - it was a completely new experience, often resulting in buggy games.

Another bottleneck was the fillrate of the system - despite being capable of a higher polycount than the PlayStation or the Saturn, its memory management effectively crippled overall graphics and required severe work-arounds to achieve good results.

All these reasons and more made programming for the platform a complete nightmare - there are very good reasons as to why there are "so many games" for it. Every single "good" part of the design happens to have its "nightmarish" counterpart.

The system has its highlights, but one shouldn't be blinded by nostalgia - it has plenty of flaws.

//Completely off-topic, I know.

 

[NightsOwl]

It wasn't bad. No, but it could have used some better games. I find myself playing mostly rhythm games from Japan/Korea because there's not much other than JRPGs on it. While I like that.... I don't like too many of that. Especially since half of them are bad. As for the other games for the PSP... I really only like a handful of them. God Eater Burst was a blast, and totally worth the system by itself.

I personally think piracy definitely hurt the PSP in a 7895/9999 HP kinda way. In other words... It hurt it, yes, but it still did fine and has a decent library of games.

 

[suppow]

piracy doenst kill consoles, that's a myth. the PS1 mainly caught on because of piracy, and the PS2 achieved worldwide success because of it.
you can see how the PS3 was pushed back somewhat do to piracy on it being more complicated.
even the 360 did a bit better.
hell, just look at PS2 vs NGC.
or even N64 vs PS1.

same with the DS, and Wii, those people who arent casual girl and grandma players, probably got it with piracy in their mind.

flame me, but it's true - people like consoles with easy backup playback.

 

[tbgtbg]

PSP was saved by piracy.
The main reason most people get a PSP is because of the homebrew and piracy capabilities

I certainly never would've bought one if not for it being so hackable. I've spent way more time with the thing playing emulators and PSX games than I have actual PSP games. Not that there aren't good PSP games, but not enough to make them the primary reason to get a PSP.

 

[emigre]

piracy doenst kill consoles, that's a myth. the PS1 mainly caught on because of piracy, and the PS2 achieved worldwide success because of it.
you can see how the PS3 was pushed back somewhat do to piracy on it being more complicated.
hell, just look at PS2 vs NGC.
or even N64 vs PS1.

same with the DS, and Wii, those people who arent casual girl and grandma players, probably got it with piracy in their mind.

flame me, but it's true - people like consoles with easy backup playback.

I will not flame you but I will ridicule you.

hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahhahahhahahahahhahahahahahahahahahha

 

[suppow]

I will not flame you but I will ridicule you.

hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahhahahhahahahahhahahahahahahahahahha

you just keep lying to yourself
lol

 

[Foxi4]

you just keep lying to yourself
lol

Please check the global results for Homebrew Channel installations before making wild claims.

It's a proven fact that "pirates" are in the great minority as far as the overall userbase is concerned - the great majority of players either don't mod their consoles at all, fearing the ban hammer or don't even know that's an option and don't care because they can simply afford buying games on a regular basis.

 

[emigre]

you just keep lying to yourself
lol

And you can keep making stupid ideas up.

 

[suppow]

Please check the global results for Homebrew Channel installations before making wild claims.

It's a proven fact that "pirates" are in the great minority as far as the overall userbase is concerned - the great majority of players either don't mod their consoles at all, fearing the ban hammer or don't even know that's an option and don't care because they can simply afford buying games on a regular basis.

i'm guessing you're probably only thinking of users within the US, or EU, and to that i can agree, but you are forgetting there's a large market outside of that.

 

[suppow]

And you can keep making stupid ideas up.

i see no argument on your side, so i'm guessing you got nothing to say.

 

[Mantis41]

I remember posting a thread asking whether easy piracy of a console could boost hardware sales. I was pretty much slammed with most people saying that such a small percentage of consoles are ever hacked that it could not possibly have any effect on sales.

I remember thinking at the time how many threads I have seen where piracy caused the death of this console or that software agency or how billions are lost every year. Needless to say I let the argument die.

So now I am somewhat confused. If only an extremely small percentage of consoles are ever hacked how the hell can this have any effect on the industry what so ever?

 

[Guild McCommunist]

i'm guessing you're probably only thinking of users within the US, or EU, and to that i can agree, but you are forgetting there's a large market outside of that.

The market outside of the US (aka NA) and EU isn't that large. There's China, Japan, and Australia pretty much.

EDIT: Korea might count too. But by and large when it comes to video games it's NA, EU, and J.