Sony Continues To Lose Ground In Mobile Gaming 202
donniebaseball23 sends this quote from an opinion piece at Industry Gamers:
"On Monday, news came down the pipeline from SCEE president Andrew House that Sony wants to focus on a younger audience for the PSP with future titles. My immediate reaction was one of shock and confusion. After all, in an interview with IndustryGamers at E3, Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime noted that, 'the way I would describe the market for the Nintendo 3DS would be the launch market that we had with the Nintendo DS plus the launch market that maybe PSP had.' When your primary competitor is looking to the exact market that you've catered to, why would you abandon that market? There was a time when Sony Computer Entertainment was a trailblazer, bringing things to the industry ahead of everyone else. Nowadays, however, it seems that Sony is content to merely fall in step behind everyone else and simply try hard to not fall too far behind."
PSP titles: (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Trailblazer? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:PSP titles: (Score:5, Interesting)
What they really need is good games that people want to play.
Exactly. The problem with the PSP is that there is almost nothing interesting. There are a ton of solid ports/sequels of PS2 titles, but quality alone doesn't matter when it is just another reincarnation of Tekken, WipeOut, RidgeRager and whatever. I just don't care about playing a downscaled version of games I already played.
The amount of proper new games on the PSP is vanishingly small and that is rather depressing given that the hardware should be perfectly fine for games like Braid, Limbo, Shadow Complex or whatever interesting stuff makes it to XBL/PSN. It is those types of games the PSP could need more of, good solid 2D/2.5D stuff that is easy enough to play on the get go, but complex enough to feel like a proper game and not some casual mini game.
I like the PSP hardware, but without games to play, that is worth nothing and in terms of dust collecting the PSP beats even the Wii by a mile.
Re:Trailblazer? (Score:1, Interesting)
I don't count more CPU power, more GPU power or more storage as bringing things to the industry. It's sort of a given: CPUs and GPUs get faster and better every four to six months, storage capacities keep increasing. No matter who does it, we already know it's going to happen. That's not trailblazing.
- Mattel Intellivision: first console with a keypad
- NEC TurboGrafx-16: first console with a CD-ROM add-on
- NEC TurboExpress: first system to use the same carts as the non-portable system
- Nintendo Virtual Boy: first console with 3D display
- Nintendo DS: first console with a touch screen
- Nintendo Wii: first console with a 3D remote
- Nintendo 3DS: first console with no-glasses 3D display
Those things were/are trailblazing examples. Some of these things didn't fare well, such as keypads (even SEGA tried to bring it back with the Jaguar) and 3D displays (384x224 in only three shades of red inside something that looks like binoculars was far from a good idea). But they were trying something new, things that hadn't been tried before.
What did the PSP bring that was new and unexpected? Adding "feature XYZ in a portable system" doesn't count, just like "doing XYZ on the internet" should not be allowed in patents.
Re:Who trusts Sony? (Score:2, Interesting)
Yeah, I haven't turned mine on since I played and beat uncharted 2 in 1 week right after it came out...i think that was sometime back in 2009, and before that i didnt turn it on since i first bought it..2007?
I have to admit, i do have a sony lcd tv, the xbr 9, better than samsungs offerings (which i really liked before that).
Back in the day sony was great. TVs and audio receivers that lasted for 10+ years, ps2s that last for 10+ years...Now they are slowly becoming a joke in the industry. the PS3 has so much potential, why they took linux away from us perplexes me. They were using the thing to freakin research cures for diseases for gods sake!!! and support the airforce, but whatever. it was being used for more than just a kids toy. Technically, they couldve charge $500+ for each to those researchers and made a profit while keeping linux.
In the end, the person running the PS3 show is an idiot and has been for years. With the rumors of sony supporting 3rd party apps it only explains why they got rid of linux -- they can now charge for these supposed apps.
Anyone wanna buy an 80GB PS3 with about 10 games and 3 controllers??? $500$ and i'll throw in a blu-ray remote for free!!
Re:Young audiences grow up (Score:3, Interesting)
The PSP Go was a terrible decision. As it stands, there are new games coming out now that the PSP Go can't play, simply because they won't be released on PSN.
Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep [joystiq.com] is just the most recent example.
Re:Who trusts Sony? (Score:2, Interesting)
Interesting opinion given that the PS3 is the most consumer friendly of the current home consoles. (Free multiplayer, no region locking on games, user swappable hard drives, open standard controller interface, backup feature).
Also the PSP is still more consumer friendly than the DSi (no region locking).
After their repeated rootkits,
From memory there was one, from Sony BGM, yeah it sucked but people need to get over it.
engineered incompatibility,
Please clarify
engineered obsolescence,
Yeah 10 years is a pretty crappy lifetime for a home console
higher-than-market prices,
I.E. we don't make brittle junk so maybe it costs more
and lengthy history of consumer-hostility
Sort of like Microsoft and Nintendo also.
Seriously Sony certainly aren't saints but I find it weird how everyone just seems to assume they're worse than MS and Nintendo despite the contrary evidence.
Well part of the problem (Score:5, Interesting)
Is they are used to that in the professional arena. Sony has had some great success in the pro world of forcing an all-Sony solution. The best success is Betacam, the professional cousin to their failed Beta consumer format. Betacam SP was the standard to which everything was compared for the longest time. Nearly all TV was shot on it. When digital formats were coming out it was always talked about like "This looks as good as Betacam SP," or "This gives slightly better colour resolution than Betacam SP." Companies would have all Sony cameras, decks, etc.
What the seem to continually fail to realize is that such a thing doesn't work so well in the consumer space. When you are the sole owner and producer of a technology, your competitors will try and make their own. They'll also try and undercut you, which isn't hard to do with Sony. The consumer market is extremely price sensitive, unlike the pro market.
they have a real mentality of "We can tell you what things are going to be," and get surprised when they don't work out.
It is all about fun. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Sony's position is its own fault (Score:5, Interesting)
No, the big problem is pretty much forcing people to use custom firmware because it offers so many more features, not realizing why and just releasing updates to counter CFW and not add those features.
First - the UMD sucked. It's a great way to hold 2GB of data back in the day, but these days, solid state storage means 2GB of storage is cheap (and most games were under 2GB). CFW fixed this by having games load off much faster memory sticks (which started getting cheap). Hell, there was a funny video of a game taking 7 minutes to go from loading to actually in the game.
Second - the video restrictions were lame - you couldn't get full screen video at 30fps off memory stick - only UMD. CFW fixed this as well.
Microsoft realized games loaded faster off the hard disk than DVD on their Xbox and let people copy games from DVD to hard drive (it also was a great way to ensure your used game purchase was readable). They DRM protected the games by requiring the disc (holding the decryption key) be in the drive before launching the game.
Sony could've supported this in a similar way - dump a UMD to memory stick and either grab the key from the UMD, or use a machine-specific key. Games load faster, battery lasts longer, etc. CFW supported this why didn't Sony?
Second - well, eventually Sony relented when they realized people wouldn't pay $20 for a DVD and $20 for a UMD copy of the same DVD, but it took long enough.
Finally, the PSP Go - that's a laugh. It may work for a new PSP gamer, but old ones have UMD libraries and no way to play those games on the PSP Go, without purchasing them all over ago. There was a lame exchange program, but that's it - in exchange for a more expensive machine, and losing the ability to buy/sell used games. The PSP Go would've worked better as an iPod Touch competitor that happened to play PSP games, not as a PSP. And a large reason the App Store works is because of the free apps and cheap apps.
Those ads saying "Look what you get for $9.99" make me laugh - and show how out of touch Sony is. Sure you can sell a few games at $9.99, but I'm sure the App Store and the like have titles from big publishers at that price with equivalent quality. Though I think EA went and dropped the price to compete better...
Re:No kidding (Score:1, Interesting)
the psp failed not because of hardware, but because of lack of mature games. I was one of the first adopters, back in time the choice was between the psp and the ds. I got the psp because ds was going to have an endless streak of horrible nintendo like kids only game titles. guess what?
psp failed to gather publisher attention, no mature title were developed for it nor announced (I've enjoyed warhammer squad command and a few others), so the platform withered with a chronic lack of owners and publisher (one waiting the other)
now, years later sony is going to change his strategy for nintendo like audience? nice move, let's lose the last standing owners. I've already sold mine (played everything I cared of - an handful of titles) and the more I hear about the psp future the more I'm happy of selling it.