UMD-less PSP 2 rumors running rampant

[GinoD]

David Perry - Shiny Entertainment (Earthworm Jim) founder - is insisting that the PSP 2 is real. Ya. Fo' realz, dood. According to him...

I spoke to a developer who is working on it right now. I know this developer is already working on it, so that means they have a prototype. That would sound like a fall release to me.

I've been pounding on Sony for a long time to make the Playstation Portable relevant and not to let Apple stroll away with the portable game market. Look at what Apple is doing now.

Why are so many investors investing in Apple game development? Trying to pitch a PSP game to investors right now is brutal.

See: Rumor: PSP2 won't have UMD drive, says David Perry *UPDATE* PSP 2 is real, says Perry

[dewdogz]

I think sony need to gt their act together and release something GOOD. The last two PSP releases have been almost minor. And I know that this has been said over and over, but Sony need to work on SOFTWARE because without good software, their sleek new hardware has nothing to run...

[Auraomega]

I actually have to believe that a PSP2 is in the works, purely because of the lack of UMD.

If Sony remove the UMD they'll remove the ability for users to use their UMDs and force downloads, which of course will annoy everyone, which is why I believe its in the works - its exactly the sort of dumb thing Sony would do.

Personally I think the Pandora system is the way to go now'days, Sony screwed up big time with their pathetic regular release of minor revisions of hardware. Pandora has it all; Linux, free games, emulators, total platform openess, great battery life, and pretty much whatever you want.

-Aura

[Helrazr]

Well, like I said on the Rumor page a UMD free PSP2 is a bad idea for a number of reasons not the least of which is loss of direct backwards compatibility. Say what you want about digital downloads from the Playstation Network etc. I gaurantee that millions of people that have PSP's for the UMD movies and games have never surfed on over to playstation . Aside from that the logistics of ensuring a fair method by which I can download all my games and play them on my 3 different PSP's has got to be a nightmare. Besides, all my movie and game umds work in any of the 3 PSP's in the house. Can you say the same about a game you download from the PSN store? Yeah try that lemme know how that works for ya. How about movies? Sony is going to allow me to download my movie collection no problem right? Because they can verify that I have the UMD, yeah and that download from the PSN store, that's going to work on the kid's PSP too right?

Seriously, I think this guy may have some insider information but he's talking out of his a$$

[Psypher]

They are probably going to use some proprietary read-only memory stick if they do go UMD-less. Memory is a whole lot cheaper today than it was years ago, it uses up less battery, and is smaller, faster, and easily holds more than UMD's.

It would only be smart to go the memory stick route. If Sony went out of their way to please customers (hah!), they would have an MSPD aimed for the PSP like they do now (or at least they did? PSP movies?) and have some DRM software/hardware deal for backward compatability. It'll be in the pain in the arse, but you can thank piracy for that. It's only in their best interest to protect their own product/market.

But that's probably too much work and another avenue for complaint, so of course they wouldn't do that. Oh well, seems people have lived without backwards compatability for the newer PS3's, perhaps they will leave backward compatability out of the PSP equation and release some of the more popular PSP titles as downloadable games on PSN.

[Xodome]

I think the PSP2 is a great step forward. I like the idea of selling games on memory sticks as an option if you don't have the internet. I hate UMDS. I'm super interested in what this PSP2 device bring new to the table. I would love a built in keyboard and camera but I don't think they would put a keyboard on it. I hope it's a device that's always connected or connected and signed in on boot up like the PS3 with in-game xmb at least.

[soopergooman]

Digital downloads will reign supreme. not everyoen uses their psp's like us. Remember that we are 8% of total users that know of homebrew. Sony will make the new one and people will buy it. it's that simple. Heck 50+million units sold worldwide doesn't lie. Umd or Not!

[GinoD]

A bit of an update here BTW. This came in yesterday, actually, bit I couldn't squeeze in the time to update this here as well. But long story short (I guess some of you heard about this already tho):

Sony's John Koller - yeah, he's the PSP brand manager for North America, been all around the news lately too - he reacted to David Perry's claims, saying that he got it partially correct.

The part that Koller confirmed was that Sony's going to be hard-pressed to avoid the whole digital distribution gig, and that they might eventually have to give way.

HOWEVER. That doesn't automatically mean that they're foresaking the UMD. When specifically asked whether Sony would release a UMD-less PSP in the future, Koller gave that uber-annoying answer of "no comment."

Bah. Can't E3 happen already?

See frontpage post here.

[Techni]

Well, like I said on the Rumor page a UMD free PSP2 is a bad idea for a number of reasons not the least of which is loss of direct backwards compatibility. Say what you want about digital downloads from the Playstation Network etc. I gaurantee that millions of people that have PSP's for the UMD movies and games have never surfed on over to playstation . Aside from that the logistics of ensuring a fair method by which I can download all my games and play them on my 3 different PSP's has got to be a nightmare. Besides, all my movie and game umds work in any of the 3 PSP's in the house. Can you say the same about a game you download from the PSN store? Yeah try that lemme know how that works for ya. How about movies? Sony is going to allow me to download my movie collection no problem right? Because they can verify that I have the UMD, yeah and that download from the PSN store, that's going to work on the kid's PSP too right?

Seriously, I think this guy may have some insider information but he's talking out of his a$$

Finally, someone with common sense. UMD on PSP is a must