Whatever happened to... - A thread about tech trends and items that died a quiet death.

[Almighty Space Duck]

Aside from Patapon and Gravity Rush, what did the PSP have anyway?

A kickass Burnout port.

 

[Enig]

I feel like the big reason no one remembers the PSP is because its status as an emulation machine massively outweighs its own games, so when people remember it they wind up remembering the GBA and other systems instead.

 

[Fcret]

I've heard some people boast about how good it was for flights becaes of UMD, but I never heard them talk about how any of the games on it were good.
Aside from Patapon and Gravity Rush, what did the PSP have anyway?

Lots of fantastic ports. It was also the goated platform for RPGs - Falcom was basically a dedicated PSP developer for a period with all new Legend of Heroes and Ys games coming out on the PSP first. As a PSP user of the period, I would describe it as kinda like what the Switch is today just without Nintendo - full console experience pared down to fit on a handheld (as opposed to DS/3DS which were very much handheld-first experiences). And that was actually a big deal in 2007.

These days of course you have shit like the Switch and the Steam Deck which give you that 'almost no compromises' portable console experience but what the PSP was doing in the 2000s was incredibly novel.

But also I don't think I've ever met anyone who liked the PSP for UMD video. Selection was limited, quality was bad, and prices were extortionate - you were often paying more for a UMD version of a film than you would for the DVD version and most people would just opt for a portable DVD player instead.

 

[Waifu Denier]

Tons of tech got killed off by smartphones: PDAs, point-and-shoot cameras, MP3 players, portable consoles, netbooks, the list could go on.

I think it is more that they became niche enthusiast sectors rather than anything mainstream. Modern smartphones do most functions "well enough". They have more than good enough cameras for anything a normal person does, can do any music listening function a normal person needs, has the gaming capacity for your average non-gamer, etc. But most of them are still alive. You can find numerous MP3/personal media players still around, ranging from the cheapo glorified USB with a jack to extremely expensive high end stuff with the best DAC/AMP and able to run whatever high impedence headphones you throw at it. They still sell high end DSLR cameras. It's just that your average person no longer ever thinks about a standalone device for these functions.

 

[AmpleApricots]

You can't really replicate the opticals of a proper camera in something shaped like a smartphone. It's just physics. Even many of these digital cameras from the late 00s that just started supporting non-joke-sized flash cards (with often weird and proprietary formats, looking at you Sony) will take at the very least better macro shots than any Iphone XYwhatever. Even if their sensors are strictly worse. If you don't believe me, buy one. They're often cheap on eBay.

 

[Hyperbolic Steroids]

I've heard some people boast about how good it was for flights becaes of UMD, but I never heard them talk about how any of the games on it were good.
Aside from Patapon and Gravity Rush, what did the PSP have anyway?

I used to play one of the Soy Wars games Rebellion had on it whenever I got my hands on a relatives PSP. I also played a bit of the Army of Two game they had but that game was terrible if memory serves me correct. The PSP tried to be a console experience but the weaker hardware sometimes made the ports suffer with serious degradation.

You can find numerous MP3/personal media players still around, ranging from the cheapo glorified USB with a jack to extremely expensive high end stuff with the best DAC/AMP and able to run whatever high impedence headphones you throw at it.

I checked out MP3 players recently and, while saturated with cheap garbage, it seems alive and well. It seemed to me that ultra waterproof, light weight sports designs were semi popular. Stuff catering to swimmers who can't just stick their phone into their speedo and the like.

 

[Enig]

The PSP tried to be a console experience but the weaker hardware sometimes made the ports suffer with serious degradation.

Even if it's weak in areas the hardware never fails to impress me since it's basically a half powered PS2 while also being the less complex/expensive hardware setup the PS2 should have had from the start, the number of games that were ported to/from PS2 on PSP is pretty insane to see.

 

[Judge Dredd]

Aside from Patapon and Gravity Rush, what did the PSP have anyway?

Pursuit Force was also an exclusive people liked.

People mention ports, but it's strange to think that the PSP has some definitive editions of PS2 favourites like Midnight Club and the previously mentioned Burnout.

I didn't own a PSP, but I did own a PSVita. It was one of those machines known for having "no games", but I have a small collection of PSVita games, almost were exclusive to the console. These days most of the worthwhile ones have PC ports. I own the inferiour version of the machine (the late model LCD instead of the prized OLED) and the screen looks fantastic. I can only imagine what the original must have looked like if this version barely compared.

 

[Retink Retunk]

Even if it's weak in areas the hardware never fails to impress me

Something interesting about Japan and something I love about it, is that Japan is still very hardware based, not just in game consoles but as a whole despite it being a software world. I hope they can escape their somewhat stagnant culture and make exciting shit once again that's unique from what we see in the US or Taiwan just because they're willing to not always chase trends.

 

[xXthrowawayaccountXx]

Printers and Word-Art.
A more general one, but whatever happened to printers?

I can tell you what happened right now: they got apple-ified.

I remember recently attempting to buy a printer for my father. Turns out, on the one I got they decided to not include an option to connect it through an ethernet cable. I got stuck in a loop of trying to connect it because you needed to connect it to the wifi without a screen and it just kept taking me in literal circles.

Eventually I got on customer service, who was so useless that they brought in the lead designer for the printer. Who also did not help.

After about an hour of this I finally got fed up, and let me tell you, being able to actually tell one of these faggot designers that they are a stain upon this planet and to never make anything again, and just hanging up after??

I wish I could have that euphoria more often in my life.

 

[Snorky]

Game streaming platforms like Google Stadia. It was advertised as a cheap way to game without needing the expensive as hell hardware like expensive CPUs and GPUs, but ended up being a complete and utter failure within not even 3 years, with its doors closing by January 2023.

The reason is elementary. It turns out that most games like Doom: Eternal (which was reportedly one of its killer apps) rely on quick response times for pretty much anything to function but the latency you would get with streaming that shit (especially with unreliable bandwidth speeds for some people) made that impossible. Somehow, a multi-billion dollar company that actually owns a consumer-grade ISP didn't see that coming.

Some services are still around, but they are pretty much irrelevant since most people prefer to just play the game on their consoles or computers and remove the middleman from the equation entirely. Frankly, I don't blame them.

 

[XYZpdq Jr.]

Game streaming platforms like Google Stadia. It was advertised as a cheap way to game without needing the expensive as hell hardware like expensive CPUs and GPUs, but ended up being a complete and utter failure within not even 3 years, with its doors closing by January 2023.

The reason is elementary. It turns out that most games like Doom: Eternal (which was reportedly one of its killer apps) rely on quick response times for pretty much anything to function but the latency you would get with streaming that shit (especially with unreliable bandwidth speeds for some people) made that impossible. Somehow, a multi-billion dollar company that actually owns a consumer-grade ISP didn't see that coming.

Some services are still around, but they are pretty much irrelevant since most people prefer to just play the game on their consoles or computers and remove the middleman from the equation entirely. Frankly, I don't blame them.

I assume a lot of those attempts had somebody in R&D swearing that the REAL solution was happening totally soon we swear

 

[ToroidalBoat]

Why'd the "3D craze" go out?

(simulated depth perception)

 

[Vecr]

Why'd the "3D craze" go out?

(simulated depth perception)

It's annoying. It's either viewing angle dependent, low quality, or requires electronically active glasses with cables or batteries. Also, there was never a lot of high quality content. Various movies were "converted" (essentially bad guesses done in post) and the only movie I can remember that was designed specifically for 3D viewing was the 2009 Avatar, not a very good movie in general. Today, your best bet is to buy a VR headset and deal with the cable.

 

[The Hardest R]

They sold 80 million PSPs and it had zero cultural impact whatsoever. Most people knew someone with a DS, I've seen 3 PSPs ever and the last was several years ago.

I got a PSP at launch and I was pretty happy with it overall. I remember sitting outside playing Lumines in the evening and at the time, the DS had a Yoshi Touch n’ Go and a Super Mario 64 port that managed to be both inferior and superior to the original. The UMD player was pretty nice for nights doing homework that went into the early hours or an all nighter. It did lose steam after the PS3 launched but there were a lot of decent games on it and once UMD movies got discontinued, I was able to get a bunch of them for five bucks. No regrets.

The Vita was a definitely a waste though.

 

[Elysian]

It's annoying. It's either viewing angle dependent, low quality, or requires electronically active glasses with cables or batteries. Also, there was never a lot of high quality content. Various movies were "converted" (essentially bad guesses done in post) and the only movie I can remember that was designed specifically for 3D viewing was the 2009 Avatar, not a very good movie in general. Today, your best bet is to buy a VR headset and deal with the cable.

You’re forgetting the best 3D movie ever made:

 

[2ndBest]

Whatever happened to aesthetics like Frutiger Aero? Yeah it was a product of its time but even then a product of its time is better than the minimalistic shit out there now.

 

[2ndBest]

I can tell you what happened right now: they got apple-ified.

I remember recently attempting to buy a printer for my father. Turns out, on the one I got they decided to not include an option to connect it through an ethernet cable. I got stuck in a loop of trying to connect it because you needed to connect it to the wifi without a screen and it just kept taking me in literal circles.

Eventually I got on customer service, who was so useless that they brought in the lead designer for the printer. Who also did not help.

After about an hour of this I finally got fed up, and let me tell you, being able to actually tell one of these faggot designers that they are a stain upon this planet and to never make anything again, and just hanging up after??

I wish I could have that euphoria more often in my life.

I hate to double post but was this HP? They started doing this Wi-Fi only shit on printers within the last few years and it drives me up the fucking wall.

 

[Kalsarikännit]

Whatever happened to aesthetics like Frutiger Aero? Yeah it was a product of its time but even then a product of its time is better than the minimalistic shit out there now.

It’s weird to watch an aesthetic get retroactively named in real time.

I really don’t miss it. Then again, I don’t get why we’re doing minimalism in the age of actually really high definition screens, where you would be able to go balls-deep into skeuomorphism. I assume the reason is “accessibility” and that means your software has to be navigable by a legally blind Somali.

 

[Grub]

You can't really replicate the opticals of a proper camera in something shaped like a smartphone. It's just physics. Even many of these digital cameras from the late 00s that just started supporting non-joke-sized flash cards (with often weird and proprietary formats, looking at you Sony) will take at the very least better macro shots than any Iphone XYwhatever. Even if their sensors are strictly worse. If you don't believe me, buy one. They're often cheap on eBay.

I've still got one of the entry level canon digital slr's from like 2006 or 2007. It still takes better pictures than my 50mp, ai enhanced phone camera.