The Nintendo DS has been outselling both PSP and PS2 combined during the first week of Nintendogs release. Nintendo’s handheld still on top a month later, GameSpot reports.
After the punch in the face Nintendo got from the introduction of the PSP, this is very good news for the people on the Mario side. According to the GameSpot article, the DS has been the “best-selling piece of gaming hardware in Japan since the release of Nintendogs on April 21, outselling both the PlayStation 2 and the PSP” (with the exception of the week of May 9, just after “Golden Week”). When Nintendogs was released, the Nintendo DS sales exploded to 96,191 units, almost 5 times the figures from before the introduction of the game. Nintendogs is scheduled to hit the US market late August.
Star soldier is going to be the first true shoot ‘em up to be released on the sony psp on July 21st. Originaly started on the Nes in 1986 the mythical Star Soldier saga has seen sequels on many different platforms. The most recent installment, Star soldier Vanishing Earth was released on, the nintendo 64 in 1999. A remake of the original nes game was released on the Game Cube and Ps2 in 2003.
The psp version will have two modes, Caravan mode and Score attack when you have to score a maximum of points in a limited time. More interesting the game will have the possibility to be played horizontally or vertically (as pictured).
It’ll also include a password based international ranking system.
Old schoolers should rejoice.
Let’s Star Soldier screenshots.
There will be a lot of security issues popping out about these very soon I am sure, it is nonetheless very exciting news if you like gadgets. The people at ign.com have been playing with the newly announced DSpeak at the E3 Nintendo booth E3, and they say it is simply “Voice-over IP using the Nintendo DS’ wireless and microphone capabilities”.
This is still just a concept demo, but by connecting headphones and a mic, DSpeak allows you to have a conversation with another Nintendo DS users via WiFi, with a sound quality “perfectly fine, as good as a mobile phone.”
The Engadget people were there too and they add that since there are two screens on a Nintendo DS, you get Mario or Wario on one screen, moving his mouth when the other person speaks. Apparently, the software will be available as a free download. They also mention that they “couldn’t squeeze a release date out of them, and no one at the Nintendo booth knew a damn thing about the actual technology they were demoing.”
Now if you are a Sony type of person and you don’t care about the DS VoIP (I love cryptic acronyms), then get chatty on your PSP instead.
Also via Engadget, the president of VoIP company Xten thinks his company should be able to hack together a VoIP softphone for Sony’s PlayStation Portable. Well, it’s not there yet if he’s only writing about it on his blog, but it should be feasible, with the PSP built-in WiFi, TCP stack, and “headphone/microphone/control connector”.
By the way, if you want to call worldwide and receive calls on your computer and you haven’t played with Skype yet, I suggest you give it a try today. (Plus, you can support 3Yen in the process)
If you are still wondering if you should get a PSP or not, Nyko wants you to forget the gaming aspect of the device and consider the multimedia capabilities seriously. They are about to release their very stylish
Theater Experience shock and water resistant aluminum case for the PSP, which has built-in stereo speakers, a rechargeable battery that “extends playtime by over 3 times”, an adjustable stand to hold the PSP at 5 different angles, and a dual headphone jack. If you’ve tried to watch a movie on the beautiful PSP screen, you know you want this case to perfect the experience even more. After all Sony thought the PSP as a portable movie viewer and music player, as much as a portable game console. It’s about time people make interesting non-gaming accessories for it.
Via Popgadget
I must agree with Gizmodo on this one, when they write:
Will the madness never end? People: you have a PSP. Stop it with all the emulating and hacking and stuff. Just be happy with what you have. Can’t you sit still for one minute, play your basketball game or whatever, and stop trying to reverse engineer everything that comes down the pike?
Someone came up with a way to play SNES ROMs on the PSP. Which feels like a huge waste of time and resources to me, but I am sure many geeks out there will be happy to play their very old and expensive imported games on a PSP, while in the bus going to the next cosplay convention… If you recognize yourself in the above description, you can download the software at psphacker.com.
According to this month’s
Wired, Podcasting is “tired” and PSPcasting “wired” now. Don’t know how to do it? Just get to
Engadget’s tutorial on “Podcatching and audio autofill for your PSP without iTunes”
PSP Podcatching no iTunes
iPSP offers an easy way to sync video and music to your PSP on the Windows side, with one drawback: its music management functionality is tied to iTunes. If you don’t use iTunes to manage your music collection, you might want an alternative way to automagically transfer new audio content to your PSP. This is a fairly simple method of getting your fresh podcasts and tunes onto your PSP, without being tied to any particular music management software application.
Read the turorial
If Engadget say it, I believe them:
it looks like Sony’s pushing back your PSP launch until September 1st—as in, fall this year.
The date could slip again, and the announced price (£179 / €249) is not really an incentive for not playing this summer…
Quick no-fuss survey: How many of you would want to buy one directly from Japan? How many of you are in Europe? How many already have a PSP? Just answer in the comments below please.
If you were hesitant to buy a PSP because of the reported short battery, here is good news. The PSP Rechargeable Handle Pad gets you 10 hours of extra battery life to play on your PSP (according to the official (?) merchant site). And because it uses the standard PSP power supply or USB power cable for recharging, there is no need to buy an extra charger just for the Pad. Also, when you are not using the pad, you can “compress” it to a smaller size. All that for 10$.
Via MotherDigital
Forget the PSP and the Nintendo DS: if you’re really serious (some would say “geek”…), you need to get yourself a N64p. At least, that’s what Ben Heckendorn thought.
Visit his page to see the whole building process.
Via Waxy
Yes, PSP again. What do you expect these days…?
According to the Register, this is only half the number of machines Sony shipped into the US, but they are not overly worried because it took the PSP less time to reach the 500,000-unit mark than Nintendo’s DS did when it launched in the US, right before Christmas last year. It took the DS two weeks to sell what the PSP did in 2 days.
In Japan, it is over one million sold, and as far as Europe is concerned there is no official lauch date announced yet, but everyone is expecting June.
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