Considering the iPhone 4 hasn't come out yet, so no games have come out that take advantage of its abilities, nothing has really changed.
Well, we know the specs. It's really no contest. But, as the DS has shown time and time again, it's ultimately all about software and taste. What do you want to do with the device? What kinds of games do you want to play? And more important: are you comfortable with a touchscreen interface for gaming? Frankly, I have little patience for posturing from either side.
Not debating the fact that it's more powerful, but the 3rd gen is also a powerful device and it's power has never really been put to good use due to the fact there are still many second gen and lower owners. It can be as powerful as it wants, but that doesn't matter to me if I don't have any games that take advantage of that power. The OP made it seem as if now the iPhone was magically better to those that may have thought differently before. This hasn't made the iPhone better, because I honestly don't see anybody really utilizing the power, I'd love to be proven wrong though. In a nutshell, those that thought the PSP was a better gaming device aren't going to change their mind over this new iPhone and the people that thought the iPhone was a better gaming device probably already thought so prior to this new device being announced.
I agree that you can always boost hardware specs, but ultimately it depends on how they are utilized. Unfortunately after a couple of years, I've lost hope for now. It would be incredibly simple for Apple to make a gaming peripheal that utilizes the same sliding motion as the Go, but they haven't. I'll stick with the PSP for games and wait for better gaming interfaces.
I wonder if the architectural limitations of the previous iPhones have been eliminated, i.e. bandwidth. PSP is geared towards massive video/memory bandwidth being pushed around, while it was always a big bottleneck for the iPhone, as far as I understand. As long as that is the case, I think PSP might still be relevant as compared to iPhone 4.
Better control MAY have been the PSP's advantage but with all the senses that Apple has shoved inside the beauty of of iPhone 4....I truly believe developers will push the limit of control for the iPhone. In other words, what's a psp?
Motion sensing games generally suck. Accelerometer-based games generally suck. I don't foresee any changes in the near future.
PSP is still unmatched when it comes to fill-rate and bandwidth. In fact the newer iDevices apparently have a more challenging bandwidth & fill-rate / screen resolution ratio than the 3rd gen devices. On the iPhone4 & iPad the memory bus width has doubled while the pixel amount has quadrupled (or gone ~5X on the iPad). None of the specs mention the clock speed of the memory bus or the GPU, so that may change the situation somewhat.
A PSP is a device that respects your saved games. There are other reasons but the fact that the idevice absolutely does not should be paramount.
I love my PSP - but there are few games for it that I enjoy. On the other hand there are literally dozens of games on the iphone that I can't get enough of.
Motion sensing games have their place -- pretty much exclusively in gravity-oriented physics games. In this regard accelerometer controls make the most sense and are the most intuitive. In certain places they are useful to augment (but not replace) touch controls, such as driving or flying games, or any game which requires such a degree of additional control that touch controls alone are insufficient or too awkward. The gyro will only make these better, plus add the ability to rotate around gravity which can help things like augmented reality games. However, shoehorning accelerometer controls into almost anything does tend to suck. There have been a few contexts in which it has mostly worked but still felt awkward. For the most part though I really dislike accelerometer controls where they don't belong, especially when there are no options for more traditional controls.
iPhone 4 is a more powerful machine capable of producing better graphics at a better frame rate than the PSP, BUT it all comes down to what the devs will do with it. Controls can be easily argued both ways, but I am fine with touch (and tilt) controls - I have grown much more familiar with them and now I find it easier to play many games on my iPhone than on my PSP.
Sharper yes, shaders yes, better frame-rates no. As mentioned in a prior post, fill-rate is where the PSP is uncontested. And with the current trend of all device manufacturers upping screen resolutions without a proportional increase in graphics performance, smooth-running (and graphics-heavy) 3D games will be more challenging to develop than before.
That's funny: wonder my PSP corrupted all my data files the last time I was forced to upgrade -- and, of course, I had no back up. Midian, I understand how you feel about tilt controls, but for many, many people it is simply the most engaging way to play racing games. For me the nub and face buttons will never be as much fun. The PSP is the best choice if all you want to do is play console-style action/adventure games on the go. In all other areas there are better options -- and even there, you get a much better experience with any decent laptop (if you don't mind lugging one around, though the new Alienware kind of deals with that issue. I bought my PSP 1000 when it was originally released, thinking that it would be a great replacement for my PS2, which for personal reasons was getting more and more difficult to use at home. I've played some great games on it over the years, but overall it has been sort of a disappointment. The graphics are nowhere near as good as a PS2, regardless of what Eric claims (no dynamic shading, for starters), and most of the games are designed with little or no regard to the fact that it's a portable platform. More important, whenever I pay full price for a game I invariably get the feeling that I've been ripped off. "I paid $40 bucks for this?" Perhaps that's just a sign that I'm turning into an old fart, but I'm sure that I'm not the only "serious gamer" (what a freaking oxymoron) who has come to feel that way. Right now I'm about 7 hours into an SRPG on the iPad that I'm enjoying as much as any recent PSP purchase. I spent $3.99 on it.
