PSP2 Will Ditch the UMD, May Rival Xbox 360 In Horsepower


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The Playstation Portable 2, rumored to have dual analog sticks, a bigger screen and touch controls, will also rival the Xbox 360 in processing power and ditch the UMD format, sources tell Kotaku.

Earlier this week multiple sources detailed meetings with Sony during the Tokyo Game Show about the long-rumored PSP2.

In those meetings about the portable, we were told, the device was shown to have a touch panel on the back of the system what looked like a mouse trackpad. The PSP2 also had dual analog sticks and a larger display which Sony touted as being "HD."

While the device was shown in two form-factors, one that looked like the PSPgo (seen above) and one that looked like the PSP, Sony told attendees that they have not yet settled on the final design for the system.

Since breaking the news earlier this week, a few more details have shaken loose about the device, which our sources have verified.

One of the key ones is that the PSP2 will not have a UMD drive. The UMD (Universal Media Disc) was launched in 2004 for use in the PSP. Initially, the format was used for movies, but slow sales of UMD films lead to studios dropping support for the format.

Sony's PSPgo is UMD-free version of the PSP, and sources tell Kotaku that the PSP2 will follow in the footsteps of that portable. Games will be stored on a Memory Stick, according to one source. Though we've also been told that Sony is still puzzling out what the final non-UMD storage solution will be for the PSP2.

We've also learned that the PSP2 will be a much more powerful gaming device with twice the RAM of the Xbox 360.

While we don't yet know all of the portable's system specifications, we have been told that the PSP2 will feature 1 GB of RAM. That's compared to the 64 MB of RAM the PSPgo and PSP 3000 have. Both of those portables use a MIPS R4000 CPU clocked at up to 333 MHz. By comparison the Xbox 360 has 512 MB of RAM and runs a 3.2 GHZ CPU.

The specs for the yet-to-be-released Nintendo 3DS haven't been officially detailed but we've heard it will be as powerful as the Nintendo Wii which features 64 MB of RAM, and a special processor clocked at 729 MHz.

It's starting to sound like someone at Sony is listening to the murmuring about the Playstation Portable and doing something to fix the issues some have with it. Dual analog sticks. No UMD. A bigger screen. More powerful tech. Touch controls. We're not hearing a single thing we don't like so far.

News Source: Kotaku

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how powerful is the R4000 chip anyways? at 333 MHz even with a multicore design, it could be hard to beat or come close to a 3 core PPC running at 3.2 GHz unless they have a VERY good graphics chip in it to offload calculations, physics and GPU stuff to

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I really really don't understand why people care so much about dual analog sticks.... I've owned a PS1, PS2 and PS3 and I honestly can't remember a game that uses it.....

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I really really don't understand why people care so much about dual analog sticks.... I've owned a PS1, PS2 and PS3 and I honestly can't remember a game that uses it.....

so from what i gather you don't play first/3rd person shooters or any new EA sports games... or little big planet.

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More RAM maybe, but more RAM does not make a more powerful system. The 360 has a seriously powerful processor - the 64bit triple core PPC 'Xenon', a Cell derivative (it's essentially three Cell PPEs and no SPEs). Even a few years down the line it packs some major grunt, and unless Sony are going to have people carry around a tank of LN2 and a car battery to handle power and heat problems, I take this as total crap.

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so from what i gather you don't play first/3rd person shooters or any new EA sports games... or little big planet.

or controlling the camera in just about any game

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I really really don't understand why people care so much about dual analog sticks.... I've owned a PS1, PS2 and PS3 and I honestly can't remember a game that uses it.....

I hate games which make me use the analog sticks.

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No UMD means no disc based collection working on new system.

This means I'm not going to bother even looking at this until after there several games I want to own.

I have a pretty large psp collection, very few electronic.

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Hahaha.

Now if they had said "Rival 360 in graphical capability", I'd totally get that. At 800x480, it's a ton easier to get 360 visuals which natively run at 720p, or in some cases 1080p. However, processing power? That's a whole different ball game. Absolutely, no way on this planet, that will happen. Not in the next year or so, anyway. Five, or ten, years down the line? Totally forsee that. But not now.

Whoever these sources are, they're chatting ****.

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No way this exceeds the PS3/360 in overall power.

Just not possible, the PS3 only runs level with it in real world performance, not stats on paper. I can't see them putting all that kind of power into a portable machine. If they do manage anything close, lets hope it's a rechargable unit!

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so from what i gather you don't play first/3rd person shooters or any new EA sports games... or little big planet.

Pretty much.... lol

Actually I own Little Big Planet big forgot it uses the second stick because I barely touched it.... I don't quite understand the point of the game :unsure:

or controlling the camera in just about any game

Most games I've played control the camera with the L and R buttons...

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No I want buttons not touch controls :blink:

The UMD was a stupid idea from the get-go. Good riddance.

Why they broke compatibility with Minidisc I don't know I mean that's why Minidisc failed in the first place all the different formats, Minidisc failed to get rid of 3.5" floppies because Sony Decided that there needed to be music and Data Minidisc oh and charges too much for the data drives. :rolleyes:

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No UMD means no disc based collection working on new system.

This means I'm not going to bother even looking at this until after there several games I want to own.

I have a pretty large psp collection, very few electronic.

Same here. I'd prefer if it had a UMD drive for backward compatibility, but all native PSP2 games were downloaded or came on Memory stick or other flash storage. And battery life isn't an issue for me - the way I use my PSP a charge lasts a couple days to a week.

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No way this exceeds the PS3/360 in overall power.

Surely you didn't think it would actually rival PS3/360. PSP2 will rival next gen consoles as PSP rivals PS2 graphics wise. Remember it's a portable so the screen is much smaller making resolution requirements less and graphics better.

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Ahhh but the title says horsepower, if you attached a wind sail and some lego wheels to a piece of turd, that would effectively have more horsepower than the 360? :p

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Ahhh but the title says horsepower, if you attached a wind sail and some lego wheels to a piece of turd, that would effectively have more horsepower than the 360? :p

Right, the portable equivalent to the 360.

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