Portable Gaming Revolution

Okay, I know that this isn’t really a portable gaming article, but I figured that it’s interesting news and relates to an earlier article that I wrote.

So you’ll all know by now of Lik-Sang’s demise and the unfortunately role that Sony played in all of it. Well, it turns out that their antics are scaring off other importers too! It has been reported that another popular importing site, Play-Asia.com has gone ahead and cancelled all orders of the PS3 into the UK:

Dear **,

This is an important e-mail update regarding your PlayStation3 related reservation at Play-Asia.com.

We regret to inform you that due to licensing and distribution limitations, Play-Asia.com will not be able to send PlayStation3 branded products to your territory. Unfortunately this also affects your recent reservation with us.

As a result, we are very sorry to let you know that we have now cancelled your non-binding reservation (***) with us. Rest assured, as this was a “no money down” reservation only, no funds have been debited in any way.

We kindly ask for your understanding and would like to apologize for any possible inconvenience this may have caused to you.

With best regards,
Your Play-Asia.com Customer Service

I can’t really say that I blame them, given the end result of the whole Lik-Sang fiasco. Now we’ll just all have to wait for our various systems and consoles to actually be released in our home countries. Happy Waiting Everyone!

You know, I was thinking that since this site has changed over to include all sorts of portable gaming news and not just the PSP that I should start including a weekly segment to appeal to our Nintendo lovers out there. Here is a list of the DS games that are scheduled to be released this week… and sorry, I just couldn’t resist the opportunity to have a pic of Jack Black up on the site!!

- Nacho Libre
- Children of Mana
- Konductra
- Chicken Little: Ace in Action
- Need for Speed Carbon: Own the City
- Pokemon Ranger
- Scurge: Hive
- The Sims 2: Pets
- That’s So Raven: Psychic on the Scene
- Tom and Jerry Tales

Well, I have to say that the game developers just keep ‘em coming! It’s a huge week in PSP game releases, check out the following titles that are all scheduled to be released at some point before the end of the week:

- Death Jr. 2: The Root of Evil
- Dungeon Siege: Throne of Agony
- Every Extend Extra
- Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories
- Kilzone Liberation
- Lumines II
- Mind Quiz
- Need for Speed Carbon: Own the City
- Powerstone Collection
- Rush

It’s definitely been an awesome year for the folks over at Nintendo! Profits are up a whopping 72% in the second quarter of 2006, and they are apparently going to be shipping out an astounding 3 million more DS units, going from their original projection of 17 million to a nice round 20 million.

Nintendo can attribute their huge profits mostly to sales of their DS Lite combined with New Super Mario Bros. It’s definitely a good day to own stock in Nintendo when your overall sales raise up 59%!

Then, at the other end of the spectrum sits our old pal Sony. Unfortunately, things aren’t going quite as well for them over there. They are reporting profit losses up to 94% and they have cut their planned PSP shipments by 25% which will amount to an enormous 9 million units.

Sony is blaming their huge losses on both the massive battery recall that occurred, along with all the costs associated with getting the PS3 up and running. They are also reporting slower sales on both the PS2 and PSP than expected, with their videogame revenue down 21%. That doesn’t sound all that bad, until you put it into actual dollar figures… it equals a loss in and around the range of $369 million. Okay… now that sounds bad!

Sudoku, the incredibly popular puzzle game has recently taken the world by storm. Eidos Interactive, along with Zoonnami Ltd. are planning to capitalize on that popularity by creating something entirely new called Zendoku. The game is said to combine exciting puzzle battle action with the addictiveness of Sudoku. In the game, you will be able to either attack or defend against a challenger or race the clock in timed games.

The game will be released for both the PSP and DS and will not be a simple one-player game, rumor has it that there will be wireless multi-player modes available for both platforms. They’ve set a release date of sometime in Spring 2007.

“We’re excited about working with Zoonami and bringing Zendoku to the handheld gaming audience,” says Matt Gorman, Director of Marketing for Eidos Interactive. “Zendoku brings a new and fresh perspective to the enormously popular Sudoku puzzle craze.”

In the third part of a comparison series (the first two being between MP3 and portable video players and then between high end smartphones), Dr. Raymond Soneira has gone and spent a considerable amount of time pitting the LCD screens of the PSP and DS Lite against each other.

It is a monstrous article, where he goes into great detail about pretty much every single aspect of the display of each system. In the end though, he boils it down to the fact that they rank almost exactly the same… with the PSP edging out the DS Lite screen by a very small margin. You can check out the full article, if you’re interested, but here are some of the more interesting stats for you:

- DPI (dots per inch): The PSP wins in this category with 130 compared to 110 on the DS Lite. These numbers are both pretty darn impressive just on their own when you consider that an entire 19″ LCD television screen only has 86 DPI (in case you weren’t aware, the PSP screen size is 4.3″ while each of the DS Lite screens are 3.0″).

- Brightness: The DS Lite is the clear victor here with 190 cd/m² while the PSP can only rustle up a level of 115 cd/m² using just battery power and only 148 cd/m² with the adaptor plugged in.

- Tilted Viewing Contract: Basically, this measures how well you can view the screens from both a forward tilt and then from the side… this mostly comes in handy when you’re trying to watch a friend play. The PSP blows the DS Lite out of the water here with a contrast ratio of 420 when viewed from a forward tilt (the DS Lite is exponentially worse here at 96) and then 64 when viewed from the side (the DS Lite came in at 26).

When all the testing was said and done, Dr. Soneira gave the DS Lite an overall grade of “B” while the PSP ranked in at a more respectable “B+”.

A major issue for the PSP is its weakness in color saturation, which was clearly evident in the photos, and in both the UMD and Flash memory movies and videos. It was also hurt in the Ratings by the firmware restriction on the resolution of videos played from Flash memory, which degraded them to a noticeably fuzzy appearance on the (comparatively) large 4.3-inch screen. The DS Lite performed well beyond my initial expectations. All of the official Nintendo content is based on artificially colored cartoon-like images, so I wasn’t sure how well it would handle realistic photographic images with delicate colors and gray scales. It’s clear that Nintendo engineered the DS Lite to do a lot more than its present marketing suggests.

And in late-breaking news this evening, the winners at the 24th Annual Golden Joystick Awards have been announced. For those of you who may not be familiar, they are the annual video game awards that got their start way back in 1982, with the winners being chosen by the people who matter the most… who else, but the gamers!

This year, they boasted an unprecedented 17 award categories. The complete list of nominees can be found here. The winners were announced in the UK earlier today, with both the DS and PSP having fairly strong showings:

Family Game Award – Nintendogs
Girls Choice Award – Nintendogs
All-Nighter Award – Pro Evolution Soccer 5
Nintendo Game of the Year – New Super Mario Bros.
Handheld Game of the Year – GTA: Liberty City Stories
Soundtrack of the Year – Need for Speed: Most Wanted

For a complete list of this year’s winners, check out the BBC News website.

Sony has given us a little treat: firmware update 2.81 and a special Halloween LocoRoco demo. It’s not quite as satisfying as candy but I guess it’s better than nothing. The update has no new features apparently as it says “Revisions to strengthen security have been added.” Early reports say the LocoRoco demo works on firmware as low as 2.80 but we haven’t confirmed it yet. You can get the LocoRoco demo here.

…and it is with heartfelt sympathy and sadness that we say good-bye to our recently dear departed retailer, Lik-Sang…

I posted a news article a couple of days ago, reporting on the court case of Sony vs. Lik-Sang. It has been confirmed that due to the aftermath and rapidly escalating costs of the legal system, Lik-Sang has been forced to shut down.

Lik-Sang.com, the popular gaming retailer from Hong Kong, has today announced that it is forced to close down due to multiple legal actions brought against it by Sony Computer Entertainment Europe Limited and Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. Sony claimed that Lik-Sang infringed its trade marks, copyright and registered design rights by selling Sony PSP consoles from Asia to European customers, and have recently obtained a judgment in the High Court of London (England) rendering Lik-Sang’s sales of PSP consoles unlawful. As of today, Lik-Sang.com will not be in the position to accept any new orders and will cancel and refund all existing orders that have already been placed.

I find the truly ironic part of it all to be the fact that many of the upper-level Sony execs in Europe actually used Lik-Sang to bring in their own PSP’s before they were released there. This was one of the facts that Sony failed to reveal to London’s High Court, along with the fact that gamers in more than 100 countries around the world have been relying on Lik-Sang for their gaming needs.

Pascal Clarysse, formerly known as the Marketing Manager at Lik-Sang, had the following strong words to say about the whole fiasco:

Today is Sony Europe’s victory about PSP, tomorrow is Sony Europe’s ongoing pressure about PlayStation 3. With this precedent set, next week could already be the stage for complaints from Sony America about the same thing, or from other console manufacturers about other consoles to other regions, or even from any publisher about any specific software title to any country they don’t see fit. It’s the beginning of the end… of the World as we know it.

Blame it on Sony. That’s the latest dark spot in their shameful track record as gaming industry leader. The Empire finally ‘won’, few dominating retailers from the UK probably will rejoice the news, but everybody else in the gaming world lost something today.

The truly sad part here is that Sony is actually hurting their customers by shutting down the online retailer. Lik-Sang provided an awesome service and it’s a shame that Sony felt they were actually getting hurt profit-wise by them. Having used Lik-Sang’s services multiple times myself, I am highly disappointed in this turn of events. Shame on you Sony!!

Due to a system crash, this episode is out a bit later then intended. A nice side effect of that is that I now have two, count em two, “The Scene” segments for you this week. Cara had recorded one a couple weeks ago for my first recording session of #55, and thankfully it wasn’t lost in the system crash.

Anyways, this week we have a pile of news for you. I chat a bit about the Sony Gamers Day, clue you into a free movie that you can download for your PSP, talk a bit about homebrew, and then as mentioned above… Cara brings you two back to back episodes of the Scene. Hope you enjoy it.

Call our voicemail line and leave us a comment! 1-206-326-1221

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We’ve got another stellar week in PSP game releases and again, a great mix of genres! Check out the following titles that are scheduled to be released on Tuesday, October 24th:

• ATV Offroad Fury Pro
• Capcom Classics Reloaded
• Dynasty Warriors: Volume 2
• Medal of Honor: Heroes
• Snoopy vs. the Red Baron
• Star Trek: Tactical Assault

And with those timeless words, you enter the world of Parappa the Rapper! Oddly enough, I can still recite most of the first level of the original PSOne release, and I never even played the game myself! (I was just “lucky” enough to be around while my brother was forever playing through it.)

So Parappa is coming to a PSP near you (if you live in Japan), but unfortunately it’s going to be mostly a straight port. It really is too bad that Sony didn’t think to put more effort into it, given the popularity of the game. Okay, to be honest… there are a couple of differences, the first being the ability to play a four-player versus multi-player mode over AdHoc. The second being the extra downloadable songs.

Wait a sec… downloadable songs?!? That should be big news, right? I’m going to have to go ahead and say unfortunately not. Apparently there are new songs to download, but they will be played with the same original background animations and button combos as the regular songs. I’m not too sure I get the point of it, but then that’s just me.

Given the previous article that I wrote, we’ll have to see if Parappa the Rapper is going to be importable to North America.