Sony America scraps UMD-to-PSP Go conversion plans

[ssj12]

Onyxmeth said:

ssj12 said:

Onyxmeth said:

K_Beckman said:

Onyxmeth said:

Your second paragraph describes the happy medium between the iTouch and the PSP, known as the DS, and yes I agree that's what people want, which is why the DS is the market leader. It doesn't describe the Go at all.

 

 

How exactly do you come up with the DS? We have a device that is primarily a media player that can also play games and a device that is primarily a gaming machine that can play media and the happy medium between them is a device that has a touchscreen like the first device and plays games like the second but is severely limited in media playback?

The person I was responding to never spoke of media functionality in the paragraph I was answering. He spoke only of the gaming attributes of the Touch and Go. That is why I chimed in on the DS. However, with the DSi now having rudimentary media playback, a camera and an app store of it's own, I'd say it's in exactly the same early stages of this medium as the PSP is. Neither does media playback particularly well, and with their sloppy interfaces and lack of standard conversion programs, they're both akin to a $50 MP3 player in what you're getting as a consumer, which isn't much.

You missed the iPod and Zune as MP3 players as they both have horrid interfaces with lack of a standard conversion program. Itunes sucks and you know it. It cannot convert half the good codexs in its crappy mp3 DRM laced trash.

What are you talking about? The standard program of the iPod is iTunes and the standard program of the Zune is just called the Zune store I guess. They are what you use to sync your device, make your playlists, convert your files, and generally organize your files and shit. While I agree iTunes is horrid program, I actually think the Zune store is the benchmark all other programs should strive to be. It auto converts every file to correctly fit the screen and work(regarding video). I've never had to convert music files, so I don't know how that works. They are all-in-one programs that are easy enough to navigate (since even computer illiterate people seem to be able to operate iPods) and they are standard, forcing you to get used to them.

The DSi and PSP, along with cheap MP3 players, lack this feature. By leaving this out, you leave consumers open to figuring things out on their own, and that is never a good thing for the less-than-tech-savvy. As far as I can tell (and I could be wrong) they don't sync either. That is a big no-no. To the nerds like us that enjoy the freedom a standarized program can't provide, they might make for adequate MP3 players, but for the mass consumer that requires restrictions to easily operate something, they just don't cut it.

Actually Sony has their Media Manager for the PSP which is free to download, with the link is in the PSP manual, which acts like iTunes for the PSP but with an added function to allow you to access the PS Store from your PC and download games and other media to transfer to a memory stick for installation. Its actually a cleaner program with a better conversion model than iTunes as it seems to have the abiity to convert less-than-standard or high-quality files to PSP formating. Even though in the alst few firmwares the PSP has been able to accept more file types without the need to convert them.