Playable UMD in this month's PSP Official Guide Book!

[tom-nook]

Apologies if this has been mentioned before but the latest issue of the PSP Official Guide Book (from the makers of the Offical PS2 mag) contains a UMD demo with loads of playable demos.

It's pretty steep at ?6.99 (?2 more than normal I think) but the content is pretty darn good & I guess producing a UMD is a bit more expensive than a dvd:

8 Playable Game Demos
-Loco Roco (different level from the Jap Download)
-Burnout : Legends
-Mercury
-Medievel
-Lemmings
-TOCA 2
-Virtua Tennis
-Wipeout Pure

+ Music vids/ trailers (inc. Natasha B, Green Day etc.)

+ Movie trailers (inc. Steamboy, Longest Yard etc.)

[in5ane]

Thanks for the heads up, might give it a look

[MonkeyWrench]

I took a look at it yesterday but decided not to buy it, but if the LocoRoco demo is different I might just snag a copy later.

[NekoFever]

Yay, I'm going to be spending my weekend taking PSP magazines off the shelves because a lot of people seem to have sticky fingers when it comes to freebies like this

[bingowings]

yeah, thanks for that - i'll pop round to John Menzies and have a look at lunchtime.

it's about bloody time they started doing UMD demos, you would almost think Sony can't be arsed and lost faith in the format. oh...

[amorenod]

I don't think there's any lack of faith in UMD as a demo carrier, in fact I'm surprised. Iirc there're no Gamecube demo discs, I'd say that using a non-standard optical media is totally related.

Anyway, I hope they will release the demos as downloads too.

[EvilBoris]

I don't think there's any lack of faith in UMD as a demo carrier, in fact I'm surprised. Iirc there're no Gamecube demo discs, I'd say that using a non-standard optical media is totally related.

Anyway, I hope they will release the demos as downloads too.

indeed there were about 4 demos for the cube, but its weird as how they are so cheap to make yet never any demos.

I think magazine demos are a dying breed, they never seem to have anything good anymore.

[NekoFever]

Yeah, I doubt we'll see too many this generation. Just look at how huge the uptake of demos on Xbox Live has been (600 terabytes of downloads over E3 alone, according to MS). The PSP has downloadable demos available online, and both the PSP and DS have experimented with demo stations where they can be downloaded into RAM and played until the system is turned off.

I'd rather download the demos and pick up a decent magazine for ?3-4 than spend ?6 or more on a propaga...official magazine with a cover disc.

[VR46]

This mag and demo are priced and barcoded up as ?4.99 in my local HMV, don't know if they've made the same cock-up nationwide.

[Samiad]

Does anyone know if this will run on a 1.52 or earlier firmware? I might pick it up then.

[muse hunter]

yeah demo's are dead, you don't even see them getting given away with consoles anymore. I remember back in the early 32bit era demo's were huge, everyone thought they were the greatest thing since sliced bread, those monthly demo's in official playstation mag were great i always liked those net yarozee (i think that what it was called) games that were on them. But since the current gen i find that demo's were used as an excuse to buy a poor mag, mags with demo's also went up to stupid prices ?6.99 - ?9.99, demo disks just seemed to lose that freshness that surrounded them during the 32 bit era also.

[erhgiez]

Most give away DVD's are rubbish, I bought one a few months ago and it said "Reviews" I though hey maybe they are doing like a video review so I can see the game in motion, were they bollocks just a page of text on the DVD. this PSP one sounds alright, I hope it has stuff like 1 level of each game with a time trial or such so you can try and beat you score, that 1 UMD would have a lot of play if that were the case but I doubt it. But for example with something like lemmings, where they could give you a spread of levels with some really hard ones thrown in, but I bet it is just the first 3 levels which are ridiculously easy

[brians]

I have this psp demo disk but my psp refuses to take it, it just complains the region code is incorrect. I thought games weren't region locked. Has anyone else got this disk to work with an american psp?

Brian