Mobile Gaming Market Heats Up 18
A few days ago, we discussed Sony's announcement of a slew of new titles for the PSP, part of their plan to reinvigorate the platform. Unfortunately, according to analyst Nicholas Lovell, it may be too late for the PSP to achieve what Sony had hoped. He says gaming on the iPhone and iPod Touch are rapidly expanding to fill that section of the market. Despite this, rumors have been swirling once more that the PSP2 is under development, and while Sony wouldn't confirm or deny, they were at least willing to talk about the rumors. Meanwhile, the App Store is dealing with a flood of titles that shows no sign of slowing, making it somewhat difficult to keep tabs on the higher-quality games. An Apple spokesperson discussed this in an interview with Pocket Gamer, and also mentioned that they'd be OK with a community gaming service similar to Xbox Live, should somebody decide to make one. It's likely that Apple will soon see more serious competition from Android Market; now that a pricing system is going online, the major publishers have more of an incentive to bring games to the platform. The Guardian's games blog recently went over some of the top games available on Android.
PSP2 (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Wishful thinking, opportunists and game analyst (Score:4, Interesting)
Agreed. I also take tone with the issue that the PSP is a "failure". I've never even owned a Sony console, as I don't see anything unique enough to appeal to me that's not available on the PC, or a Nintendo console. That said, the PSP is the first console ever to come in a respectable second place to Nintendo's portable offering.
That it isn't beating the DS is certainly not what Sony would have preferred, but Sony has to be pleased with the fact that they are the first ones -ever- to take measurable market share away from Nintendo. If the PSP is past the monetary break-even point at this point in it's life span, and is now profitable to boot(I honestly have no idea if it is) then Sony certainly deserves to be proud of themselves, and I'd say a PSP2 is a near certainty.
From what I can tell, Nintendo's new offering, despite enthusiastic early reception in Japan, is receiving mixed reviews, and may not fare well commercially long term, particularly outside Japan. Time will tell, but I don't see it as a compelling upgrade from the DS Lite, by adding a pair of cameras, and an SD card reader. This to me is an opportunity for Sony to innovate. Again, time will tell.