PSP speedup not free

PSP News | Comes at a price.

Since the announcement that the PSP would now have the option of running at a full 333mhz, gamers have been looking forward to games taking advantage of the faster speeds. However, it now appears that those faster speeds come at a price - cranking the PSP's speed prevents the simultaneous use of WiFi.

The PSP's 3.5 firmware update back in June included the capability to unlock the PSP's core speed, taking it from 266mhz to 333mhz. Developers were quick to crow the benefits, God of War for the PSP being a notable addition to the fast camp. However, a recent report on Beyond3D suggested that the PSP SDKs force WiFi to be disabled when the speed increase was enabled.

Hopes that this may have been an unwarranted rumour have now been dashed - Sony has confirmed to GameDaily that this is a deliberate design decision. Sony's Director of Corporate Communications confirmed the findings, stating, "The recent firmware upgrade (3.50) that removed the restriction on the PSP's CPU speed enables developers to utilize speeds either lower or higher than the default 222MHz, up to the full 333MHz clock speed. The article is correct that increased CPU speed cannot be used with the PSP's wireless feature."

The lack of 333mhz and simultaneous WiFi has some interesting implications for multiplayer. As designers can only choose one or the other, WiFi multiplayer games will apparently have to use the slower speed, leading to potentially different graphical effects between single and multiplayer. The reason for the design decision hasn't been made clear, but Sony has confirmed they'll talk with their Japanese brethren to find out more. The most commonly speculated reason for the decision is one of battery life - enabling both would likely have a significant impact on play time, so to prevent designers from making bad design decisions, Sony has simply removed the option.

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6 Comments

Jim Dash

4 years ago

Yeah, this was mentioned in the Star Wars Renegade Squadron article.

I think that sucks. With battery life being the deal breaker, we have to play toned down multiplayer..

Infested Jibbs

4 years ago

Man, that battery must be on an absolute shoe string.I wonder how much of an affect full speed wi-fi would have on avg battery life?

Not really Sony's fault, battery technology has been lagging for years now, lead acid and the other variants, like lithium etc etc are all ****.The tech is there to make jazzy devices(like the psp, let's be fair it's pretty advanced) but battery technology is keeping them firmly leashed to power points.

TheAnswer

4 years ago

Im sure there is technology available to make better batteries but they are being denied being put into much wider use by the current battery makers as they will lose too much money. Hence why we have to put up with sub-standard batteries.

As for this article, why yes it would be an annoyance to have to sacrifice a feature (wi-fi in this case), to get the full speed of the PSP. I'm sure a number of people who'd never use the wi-fi functions anyway, such as myself, wouldn't really worry about this problem.

Come on guys, this is Sony afterall, did you expect them to allow you to have your cake and eat it too?

pdaddy

4 years ago

We are not really taking a 'hit' in graphics cause they will look like they do now, so basically it's not a negative when compared to what we have now..
Truthfully, it's not the best situation, but at least there is SOMETHING being done about the PSP's capabilities.. And besides, I just want God of War.. Dont care about multiplayer there, just give me some more Kratos destruction!
I do think that batteries are still crap though, I mean just look at a laptop or a portable dvd player, they have much bigger batteries than the PSPs little thing and they dont last that long either..

Skiller

4 years ago

I wonder if this problem will be present on the PSP slim since it has better battery life and all that other stuff.

ittekimasu

4 years ago

well, at least they've left it open to be able to create new batteries for the market and can always enable both features in future firmware updates, so while the door may not be opened its not locked.

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