Optoma GameTime GT-7000 review
Most really, really cheap – as in, under £700 – projectors are designed for a life of Powerpoint presentations or school classrooms, and are often terrible at playing films.
Inevitably, then, the home cinema buff in us wasn’t expecting much from Optoma’s £550 GameTime GT-7000 – especially as the GameTime bit of its name immediately suggests an exclusive console game focus.
But a few movies down the line, we’ve actually come away from the GT-7000 feeling quietly impressed.
Breaking the sound barrier
The GT-7000 is remarkably small for a fully functioning DLP projector; not quite pocket-sized, but certainly a doddle to stuff into the small rucksack Optoma provides in the box.
That’s just the start of its portability, too. Uniquely, it also ships with a separate set of 2.1 speakers, finished in the same colour as the projector and tiny enough to share the same rucksack.
The provision of these iPod-esque speakers is significant because it immediately solves the problem you usually get with portable projectors of how to conjure up audio to accompany the pictures you’re projecting onto a friend’s living room wall.
Some portable projectors have speakers built into their bodies, but this leaves the sound considerably dislocated from the pictures. So being able to put the GT-7000’s external speakers right under the picture, or at least somewhere near it, is an exceptionally elegant solution.
Spot-on spec
As well as offering an unusually thoughtful package, the GT-7000 has some surprisingly impressive specifications up its sleeve. It’s got an HD-Ready resolution of 1280×720, for starters – by no means a given at the GT-7000’s price level.
Plus it boasts a contrast ratio of 4000:1 that makes the contrast ratio figures of any similarly affordable rival look pathetic by comparison.
Its connections thankfully include an HDMI, alongside the anticipated component video and D-Sub PC inputs. And it’s pleasant to set up, too, thanks to such unexpected bonuses such as a fair amount of optical zoom, Texas Instruments’ BrilliantColour processor for boosting colour vibrancy, various Degamma settings, and even a degree of colour management.
Games are not the only fruit
Despite its apparent mere gaming ambitions, the GT-7000 is actually surprisingly effective with films too. The main reason for this is that it is far more capable of producing a believable black colour than any similarly cheap machine, so that dark movie scenes look credible and dynamic.
The GT-7000 also makes the most of its HD Ready resolution, reproducing Blu-ray films and HD console/PC games with terrific sharpness and detail. Its colours are vibrant yet mostly believable as well, and its high native resolution ensures that colour blends are likeably subtle.
While the GT-7000 definitely comes to life with HD, especially an HD game, it isn’t by any means the disaster with standard definition sources we’d anticipated.
We’ve seen sharper standard def pictures from costlier projectors, certainly, but for the money the GT-7000’s relative freedom from noise and colour tone glitches makes its standard def performance more than good enough.
Problems, problems
Inevitably, though, the GT-7000 isn’t perfect. Its pictures aren’t particularly bright, for starters. Also, we detected the ‘rainbow effect’: flashes of red, green and blue stripes over really bright image elements caused by the single-chip DLP technology’s colour wheel system.
If you’re forced to site the projector near your seating position, meanwhile, you might be distracted during quiet game or movie moments by the hefty amount of fan-cooling noise the GT-7000 churns out. We were a little disconcerted, too, by how hot the GT-7000 still gets despite the noisy fans.
Sound worth a pound
Our last moan about the GT-7000 is that its speaker system is really pretty feeble. There’s precious little bass, nowhere near enough volume to produce a sound comparable in size to the king-sized pictures on show, and finally lots of distortion tends to set in when the going gets tough.
Probably the best thing we can say about the GT-7000’s audio is that it’s better than nothing. Just.
Legit way to get a PlayStation 3 for $99 only
This isn’t really “news” since its more than a week old, 10 days to be exact. But this is actually a good way for those that pay their bills with credit cards. Based on cnet.com, you can sign up for a PlayStation Visa card with no-annual-fee (even I want one just for the sake of it being a PlayStation
Visa card). Then go into SonyStyle.com and grab yourself an 80GB PlayStation 3 for the original price of $399. In a few weeks, Sony will reimburse you with $100 credit which knocks your PS3 down to $299 instead. And for those who regularly pay their bills using credits, this will be perfect for you. Within a six month period, you can get another $100 reimbursement for every $1500 spent on the PlayStation Visa card, looks like you can only do it twice judging from the original source.
I think this is a pretty good and legit way to get a good deal for a new PlayStation 3, those that pay their mortgage, car lease/finance etc can take this opportunity and get themselves a PlayStation 3 for $99 (plus tax of course). I would but I don’t have a mortgage yet, I’ve paid off my car awhile ago unfortunately and most importantly I’ve already got my 40GB PS3.
Source: cnet.com
Microsoft exec raises handheld Xbox issue
t’s long been a subject of debate among gamers as to whether or not Microsoft will ever produce a handheld console to challenge the incumbents from Sony and Nintendo, so let’s add a little fuel to that with news about a possible mobile Xbox.
Speaking to the games website Kikizo, MS VP Shane Kim strongly suggested that a handheld version of the Xbox is not just possible but actually likely.
When, not if
He bluntly stated: “For us, it’s a matter of focusing on ‘when’, because if we chased after a mobile or handheld opportunity, we would not have the resources and ability to do things like… Project Natal. [B]ut we’re building a service in [Xbox] Live that… will extend to other platforms. No question about it.”
As for why making the Xbox experience mobile is important, Kim made it clear that connectivity is the key. “We understand that customers don’t want an island experience, they want to be connected to the rest of their lives.”
In other words, he sees it as essential to keep players within the Xbox world on as many platforms as possible.
A phone too?
Kim also raised the subject of what kind of hardware might be needed: “So the question will be, how do we enter into that market – do we do our own device, do we create our own phone?”
With so many diverse threads at Microsoft leading to mobile devices as diverse as Zune, Windows Mobile and, possibly, Xbox mobile, it seems clear the company has some big decisions to make soon.
Sony details PSP app store plans
Al Warmington on Sony’s latest move to beat Apple
Sony’s big E3 announcement was the new PSP Go, which comes without a UMD drive but backed up by promises of a major PSP Store revamp. There have been whispers of non-gaming software being welcomed into the PSP Store for the first time and now SCEE’s head of developer relations, Zeno Colaço, has confirmed a new development ‘pipeline’ which will see all kinds of new content making its way to the handheld PlayStation.
“We’re introducing new initiatives for the PSP which take it beyond traditional gaming, but still includes elements from gaming, and also includes new developers,” Colaço told Develop in a behind-closed-doors interview at E3.
These initiatives include the significant reduction of the price of the PSP Software Development Kit, which developers need to create games for the handheld. But it is also opening up a brand new area of the PlayStation Store, which will have a much more relaxed stance on what’s allowed in and how much it should cost, paving the way for non-gaming apps for the first time on a handheld console.
Sony has also been courting new developers, including some who have worked with the Apple iPhone and on casual games, to ensure that there’s plenty of content to get PSP Goers going.
However, it’s still a bit of a mystery as to what this new content will be like; it has been described as “instant gratification, snackable content” by one developer. It’s clearly open to non-gaming apps, if the devs so choose, so we may yet see Twitter and Facebooks clients on the PSP. We could certainly do with some better internet radio apps too.
We’ll have to wait for the launch of the PSP Go in October to find out what’s up the PSP Store’s sleeve, but if it’s a success, Sony may just be able to turn the tables back on Apple.
Link: PlayStation (via Develop)
Buy one here: Gamestation | Game | Play
The making of iconic videogames
It is a rare thing indeed for a modern-day videogame to be described as truly ‘groundbreaking’, despite the number of times that particular adjective is abused by games mags and websites the world over, yet TechRadar has just been treated to a talk by two designers of the British games industry’s biggest and most groundbreaking games of all time.
David Jones and David Braben were giving a short presentation at this year’s Develop conference, each playing the other’s best-known game (Grand Theft Auto and Elite, respectively) and sharing some of their thoughts on what made both games into the legends that they have unquestioningly become.
Both games – despite being from different eras – featured huge open worlds that gave the player a sense of total freedom to do what they liked, to create their own stories and inhabit their own, fantastically escapist alternative worlds.
And both games inspire that look in the eye of gamers of a certain age…
“Elite was criticised back in 1984 for its 3D graphics,” admitted Braben. Ironic really, when you consider, as David Jones does, that the original GTA also received flack from games publishers and hardware manufacturers in the late 1990s for being “a 2D [top-down] game in the 3D world of PlayStation.”
Elite took Braben and his partner eighteen months to complete from start to finish, which he admits “felt like a very long time back then”, but publishers were not initially overimpressed with the pair’s immense space-trading 3D fantasy game.
“The initial response from publishers was very negative,” he recalls. “At that time [1984] there were lots of Pac-Man, Galaxians and Space Invader clones on the market. There was a ‘coin-op mentality’ whereby if a game didn’t have a playtime of ten minutes max, with three lives, then publishers weren’t interested.”
Not bad, really, for a game that went on to sell more copies than there were BBC Micros on the market at the time. “Kids were buying them and taking them to school to play at their computer clubs,” Braben fondly recalls.
The joy of docking
As David Jones clumsily flies an Elite Ship near to the anarchist planet of Riedquant, there is laughter from the Develop audience at the fact that he is having trouble making the ship go left or right.
Which reminds us of one thing: games were loads harder back then!
“It takes quite some dedication to get into a game of Elite,” admitted Braben. “But then again, after waiting twenty minutes for the cassette to load, gamers were perhaps a little more patient than they are now!” he jokes.
In addition to fighting enemy ships, all of which were named after various snakes (“they had the most types in the Thesaurus” says Braben) the other key mechanic of Elite was having the ability to scoop up your enemies cargo and also to trade in a number of both legal and slightly dodgy cargo.
“The fact that you could also choose to become a pirate and a smuggler quickly became a central mechanic,” says Braben. “Controversially, particularly because this was the BBC Micro, we put in slaves, firearms and narcotics.”
Courting controversy
Still, despite all that, and despite the fact that Elite went on to become one of the biggest selling games in history at that point, there was little controversy around the game. GTA however…
“Oh the controversy aspect [of GTA] was completely built-up,” admits David Jones. “It was used as marketing for the game. We employed Max Clifford who, once he saw the game, was a little bit disappointed [with its cartoony style]. So he just never let us show the game.”
“He told us that he would just tell the politicians all about it without showing it,” Jones recalls. “And, to his exact word, we were on GMTV within one week. One hour of prime-time television talking about the game. Just as he had said!”
Games PR has become increasingly (and often rather annoyingly) savvy to the ways of controversy, so it is strange to recall that Jones’ first GTA was the controversial sensation that it was, a mere twelve years ago.
David Braben is almost jealous-sounding when he recalls how little negative press response his game received. “There was not even a bleep,” he says. “Maybe we should have employed Max Clifford!” (Though he does then tell us that Elite was the “first game to ever do a press launch” – at some frighteningly in-the-dark rollercoaster at Thorpe Park, apparently!).
Elite did get a slot on ITN back in the day, although that was only because the news editor at the time had realised that all his staff were obsessively playing Braben’s game on ITN’s BBC B’s in their downtime.
Memory overload
Elite was made for the 32k BBC Micro. “Well, around 22k when you take off the screen,” recalls Braben. “Most emails you send these days are in the 30k mark,” he says – an amazing fact which really does show how far we have come in 25 years.
The whole, immense galaxy of Elite. Less than an email.
Explaining the clever math behind this, Braben adds that the first version of Elite that he showed to publishers had “two to the power of forty-eight” galaxies. In the end, they settled on eight.
They also had to be careful about the self-generated names of certain galaxies as they “were noticing planets in the game that had names like ‘arse’!”
“In those days we were really writing games for ourselves,” says Braben, which is quite possibly why his early games were hilariously difficult at times. “There is that danger of being too close to a project… when you test it and test it and it becomes too easy for you.”
Initial seeds of inspiration
So what were the original inspirations and ‘eureka moments’ behind GTA and Elite? Were there any?
“Initially, it was the tech,” says Jones. “Once we had that isometric top-down view of a city and we knew we could zoom in and out and so on… then it was a case of ;wouldn’t it be great if we could do?… It was a very iterative design process.”
Jones and his team also had “the initial idea to play the police [in GTA]… basically we just wanted huge maps and an open and freeform playing area.
More than anything, Jones recalls that GTA was inspired by pinball. “You just have to get 1000000 points… plus all the dot matrix stuff in the game was emulating pinball. And each time you completed a mission it was effectively the same as giving yourself a multiscore bonus.”
Braben echoes this idea that it was the technology that drove his inspiration. He also remembers having a lot of pressure for his game to “have an ending” and freely admits that he never, ever imagined gamers would actually put the time in to achieve the legendary status of being Elite.
Sony PSP Go to have you all hot and bothered?
Sony clocks up the PSP Go processor
UMD-less and smaller screen aside, the worst kept secret at this year’s E3 gaming convention the PSP Go, could become the hottest gaming device, literally.
After the iPhone 3GS similarly felt the heat over sporting a sunshine-unfriendly frame, the latest instalment of Sony’s handheld gaming range could potentially be facing similar heat-inducing issues.
With capabilities for the Go to reach a maximum clock frequency of 480Mhz, gaming should be the most seamless and smooth running ever seen on a PSP console. While the new processing power should also deliver similar Apple iPhone 3GS-like speed internet browsing, it could well come at an expense with the PSP Go likely to feel like a portable iron in your hands after a gaming session.
A considerable increase on the 333Mhz of the current PSP, the processor life of the original PSP began at 222MHz owing to concerns of overheating and saving battery life. This was eventually increased to 333MHz via a firmware update, and speculation is rife that there could be firmware updates for the PSP Go to up the 480 MHz ante.
With just months from its October 1st launch, those eager to get their hands on the PSP Go will be hoping that the only hole burning in their pocket will be from the hefty £229 price tag and not from a sweltering console.
Link: Sony (Via Playstation Lifestyle)
Buy one here: Gamestation Game Play
Nintendo Wii MotionPlus Roundup
Over a year after it was announced at E3, we’ve finally got our hands on the Wii MotionPlus add-on, and on the first batch of games that exploit it. Ever since the Wii launched in late 2006, there’s been a feeling that the motion-sensitive technology that is its key selling point hasn’t quite lived up to expectations. Sure, we’ve had fun with our virtual tennis rackets, golf clubs, snooker cues and light sabres, but where was the pinpoint accuracy and lifelike movement Nintendo led us to believe would be ours?
MotionPlus is an attempt to put his right; a compact, snap-on module that helps the technology built into the Wii remote and the console itself get a more accurate picture of where the remote is in the 3D space in front of the screen, and the exact angle and position it’s being held in. The result should be, theoretically, a new generation of realistic Wii games, giving the player more scope for genuine skill and finesse, and simulation games a closer approximation of that real-world feel. Does it work? We’re about to find out.
The module itself is surprisingly small and light, adding approximately 4cm to the end of the remote, and weighing a little less than 20g. It snaps easily onto the expansion port at the bottom of the remote, with the catches disengaged by two buttons on the side for quick release. To stop this happening in game, there’s a sliding lock on the back of the unit. A pass-through is provided at the bottom to allow you to connect your nunchuk, while a new protective jacket is provided to cover the extra length and prevent careless players from smashing your new LCD or plasma screen. Physically, that’s all there is to it.
Behind the scenes, it’s known that MotionPlus adds a special dual-axis angular rate sensor to the remote’s existing accelerometers and IR transceiver. Not only can this give a more accurate picture of the linear movement of the controller, it also provides more accurate data on the rotation of the device. This particular function is key to the new MotionPlus games, as we’ll see in a minute. Currently, just three games support the accessory, but later on this month we’ll see Wii Sports Resort, with fencing, jetski and frisbee-throwing activities, and a rnumber of other MotionPlus-compatible games are on their way.
Wii Sports Tennis is, for many people, the thing that first attracted them to the Wii, so it’s no surprise that MotionPlus has been adopted by this year’s two Wii tennis games. Grand Slam Tennis is EA’s first attempt to take on Virtua Tennis, Smash Court Tennis and the Top Spin series, and it’s no surprise to see EA competing using the means it knows best – smart licensing. Grand Slam features all five tournaments of the Grand Slam series in their real-life locations, meaning that, while Virtua Tennis 2009 has to settle for the ‘London Tennis Club’, Grand Slam can give you Wimbledon. And while both games give you a choice of 23 real-life players, EA has signed up such all-time legends as McEnroe, Navratilova, Borg, Sampras and Becker, on top of modern greats like Federer, Serena Williams, Nadal and a certain, rather popular Scottish chap.
In fact, EA has been very clever in the way it pitches Grand Slam at the Wii’s mainstream market. Not only can you play with such recognisable old-school heroes, all represented in their vintage prime, but the whole look and feel of the game is bright, colourful, cartoony and clearly aimed directly at a casual gaming audience. The courts and players are caricatures rather than realistic versions of what you might see on TV, and the game uses a dynamic camera system that zooms in and out on the action to give you a workable view to make your next shot. And, unlike Virtua Tennis 2009, we get action replays after shots and a reasonable commentary from Pat Cash.
What’s more, the structure of the main career mode is particularly straightforward and accessible. First you create your player using a cut-down version of EA’s established GameFace technology, then enter them into the Grand Slam. Each round kicks off with an exhibition match, then proceeds to a Legend Challenge where, by beating a famous player, you can win a skill (e.g. Roddick’s power serve or Navratilova’s netplay), which can then be used to boost your abilities using the three skill slots available to your player. After that comes a short Skill Challenge – a quick singles or doubles match played using an unusual set of rules – and, if you’ve performed well in the previous three events, a bonus Legend Challenge. Finally you get the tournament itself, with four rounds and a final. There’s enough play in each individual tournament to keep you busy for half an hour or so, and enough variety to ensure you don’t get bored. Of course, it’s not the deepest or richest career mode around, but then EA knows that it’s in the online and – above all else – the offline multiplayer action that the game’s staying power resides.
So how does MotionPlus affect the game? Well, the game already tracks the general direction of each stroke – straight, high to low or low to high – but MotionPlus adds the chance to add spin to the ball (by twisting as you connect) and aim the ball more accurately with the follow through. It’s hard to explain in words, but what comes across is that the ball does what you want it to more often than it does with the regular remote controls, and there’s a greater sense that what happens on screen is directly related to what’s happening in front of it. The result is a very accessible, intuitive and enjoyable game of tennis, though there are still some annoyances. Both computerised and human players will score cheap points against you by hitting shots from the net that your onscreen persona just can’t run to in time, and if you play against a character skilled in net-play, this might get on your nerves quite a bit. There will also be times when the motion sensing seems to go horribly wrong, though this can usually be cured by standing still for a few seconds before your next serve to give the system time to recalibrate.
For casual players, there’s no doubt in my mind that Grand Slam is the most enjoyable and entertaining tennis game on the Wii, and is the sort of game that most Wii owners will enjoy dragging out all summer long. It isn’t, however, necessarily the best tennis game on the system. Confused? Don’t be. All will become clear on the very next page.
Author
Stuart Andrews
Published
5th Jul 2009
Manufacturer
Electronic Arts
Supplier
Amazon.co.uk
Price
£25.52 (Exc VAT)
as reviewed
£29.99 (Inc VAT)
Ion 2 Said to Double Ion’s Graphics Power
You may already have heard that nVidia will be supporting VIA Nano CPUs with Ion 2 but you may not have heard the latest rumour, originating from Fudzilla, that the updated platform will feature notably more graphics power than its predecessor.
According to Fudzilla Ion 2 will feature double the 16-shader’s offered by the 9400M graphics chip in Ion, to 32 – or possibly more – giving it a decent graphics boost. CUDA applications will also see an improvement, although as there are relatively few that I’d expect anyone working from a netbook to use on such a machine so that’s not much of a selling point. However, Windows 7 will be able to leverage GPU-acceleration so the added power Ion 2 is said to be brining may well be welcome come October.
Also notably, Ion 2 is, thanks to a die shrink, supposed to offer this increased performance without an increase in power draw. There’s also the potential that in reducing the die size of Ion 2, nVidia will be able to bump the price down a little and, as such, make its platform that bit more tempting to manufacturers and consumers alike.
Ion2 is expected to launch before the year is out, so we should only be waiting a few months to see if this speculation carries any weight.
Link: Fudzilla.
LEGO Battles – Nintendo DS
The basic premise here is pretty close to Command and Conquer. You take control of your LEGO characters to command them in various tasks around the game map. The map is fogged, and a few clear aims are given so you know what you are doing: fairly typical RTS stuff.
So you start off in LEGO Castle, taking control of your king and a few basic troops (guardsmen, archers, knights) as well as builders who create your base. Like C&C, you collect resources to give you the money to put up more buildings, defences and as levels progress, give you more options to create troops and vehicles.
Alongside the actual aims of the level, there are also bricks you can pickup as you roam around, which will allow you to unlock extras in the game. Some of these bricks are hidden in woods (in the Castle levels), which would have to be chopped down to reach them. It takes a fair amount of roaming to collect all the hidden extras, and there’s a fair chance you won’t bother, choosing to skip on in levels, rather than free roam.
Control is based around stylus highlighting and directing your LEGO troops. You can move them around or send them off to attack an enemy and so on. There are more advanced options such as a force attack, to fell trees, which they would otherwise just stand and look at. You can also get them to patrol an area, or stand their ground in defence, rather than running off after any enemy that shows themselves.
AI is always an issue in this sort of game and unfortunately it is something of an irritation here. Select a collection of men and send them to a location and you might find that half of them don’t arrive, especially if they have to walk around a particular impassable object. They’ll find they can’t progress, so they’ll stop.
The same problem can apply on bridges, when you want to send your troops over to set-up a defensive bridgehead and move more men in behind, you might find some of your cavalry stops on the bridge, and the army backs-up, unable to pass.
We are also not totally sold on the caps placed on available characters, although it does mean you have think a little harder. Usually victory can be yours through a simple formula or combining all your men and all your vehicles and roaming around destroying things, but you’ll have to do that in stages because you can’t highlight everyone and send them off all in one go.
This might be something to do with available processing power more than anything else, as in some epic moments we did see the odd stutter as a massive battle pulled itself through a sticky patch.
But the game moves along at a fair lick, with just about enough variety to keep things engaging. The format of levels is usually pretty similar: go here, find this, destroy these things. Each storyline has a good and bad side too, so you get a chance to play with all the different characters, once you complete the first Act of each story.
Gameplay is fun and with levels taking about 20 minutes or so each, this isn’t something you pick-up and play for a few minutes here and there. Equally, it won’t take you too long to get through the game, with the difficultly set pretty low, although we found a few levels where our poor strategy led to a last minute defeat.
There are also a Free Play option and Multiplayer options, allowing you to battle it out in a head-to-head with various different types of battle available. It extends the life of the game and gives a chance to get away from the story mode if you find it getting a little stale.
Sony claims it had UMD-less PSP planned all along
Al Warmington wonders why it already seems like digital downloads have been left too late?
Sliding screens and internal memory aside, the most fundamental change in the new PSP Go is the lack of UMD drive. Until recently, UMD has been the only medium available to full-sized new PSP games.
But what at first glance looks like an abrupt turnaround for the tech giant, is in fact something that Sony has been considering since the birth of the PlayStation Portable, according to Sony’s Naoya Matsui.
In a recent interview (Japanese), the head of SCE’s product planning division explained that Sony has been considering a ‘network centric’ model all along. “We’d planned to release a PSP model without a UMD drive since the very beginning,” Matsui said. “But if we’d simply released the hardware, there wouldn’t have been much for everyone to enjoy. We needed to prepare the right environment for it first – things like the transferral of content with the PS3 and PSN, and PC software to manage content like music and movies such as ‘Media Go’.”
These comments stand at odds with Sony’s sometimes painful love affair with proprietary optical media formats. But putting that aside, the question now on the lips of many critics is why did Sony take so long? Right now, PSP faces some of its toughest challenges yet – it’s already a long way behind the Nintendo DS in the handheld market and the Apple iPhone and iPod Touch are steadily encroaching on handheld gaming turf. The iTunes App store already boasts hundreds of downloadable titles and more major games publishers are getting board every day.
In the harsh clarity of hindsight, it seems that Sony should have pushed for digital content years ago, rather than waiting until now to jump on the bandwagon. Furthermore, in what seems like an attempt to pacify games retailers, the digital versions of games aren’t even particularly advantageous to the average consumer – they are set to cost the same as the UMD versions, despite the lack of packaging, instruction manuals and shipping costs, and they can’t be bought or exchanged second hand.
But then again, when the PSP launched back in 2004 – and even by the time it reached these shores, almost a year later – it was a very different market out there, and the handheld console was a very different beast. Back then, even having a very rudimentary browser on board was a bit of novelty, not something you’d expect as standard.
This was also months before the Xbox 360 hit the gaming scene and made game downloads a permanent fixture in the console market. Yet at the same time it was pioneering in-game DLC in games like Wipeout Pure.
So perhaps Sony’s mistake was in spending too much time preparing “the right environment”. Sony puts a lot of focus on its PS3-PSP interconnectivity, yet the number of people who own both systems must be relatively low. Even so it took until October 2008 for the PSP’s dedicated PlayStation Store to come to light and that’s given Apple’s rival devices a chance to slip in and grab a sizeable portion of the growing download market.
Yet Sony is not out of the game either.PSP Go is not due out until October 2nd, so customers have yet to express their opinion of Sony’s enhanced download service with their wallets. In the long run too, the huge Sony corporation has an awful lot of content and services that could be put to use on using that ‘network-centric’ model. Here’s hoping this could be the start of a new era for the PSP system.
