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Portables (Games) Entertainment Games

PSP Pricing, Competitiveness Analyzed 25

Posted by simoniker from the priced-out-of-the-market? dept.
Thanks to an anonymous reader for pointing to a Yahoo/Reuters Japan report discussing the upcoming conflict between Nintendo's GameBoy Advance and Sony's PSP handheld consoles. Some of the most interesting speculation comes on pricing, where the article says: "Sony has not set a price for the PSP, a multi-media unit that also plays movies and music, but analysts expect it to sell for 19,000-30,000 yen ($161-$255), well above the 12,500 yen price tag for GameBoy Advance SP." Overall, the piece portrays Nintendo as "no pushover" when it comes to ceding GBA dominance, suggesting the PSP is not a direct competitor, and moreover, that Japanese analysts "..argue that Sony's incentive to go after market share is not as high this time because mobile games provide smaller margins, and less profit, than console games."
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PSP Pricing, Competitiveness Analyzed More

PSP Pricing, Competitiveness Analyzed

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  • GBA is a kids toy??? (Score:5, Funny)

    by sladelink ( 536962 ) on Friday June 13, 2003 @01:38AM (#6188635)
    "Nintendo has an edge over its rivals because its own franchises, notably Pokemon, strongly appeal to elementary schoolchildren, the core user group for handheld game machines," said Takashi Oya, senior analyst at Deutsche Securities.

    Is this true??? Have I been playing with kids toys all along? Shit, I better go get an over-priced Playstation portable, or else someone might think I'm a geek...
    • Did you not read the N-Gage article? GBA is a 10-year old kid's toy. The N-Gage (and I suppose PSP) are much cooler for older people!


    • They also call the GameCube "toy-like," so that too must just be for kids. That must be why the GC is cheaper than the PS2 (although the difference ain't what it used to be)- the PS2 is a real man's tool, while the GC is for wee chilluns. Thanks for explaining that Sony!

      (and I bet this kind of bullshit works on a lot of people. Esp dumb meatheads.)
    • Is this true??? Have I been playing with kids toys all along?

      Y'know, when I saw these accusations from Nokia and Sony and all, I thought many of the same sarcastic comments you just mentioned. I mean, I own a GBA, and I enjoy it, so how can it be a kiddie system? Circle of the Moon is hardly a kiddie game...

      That was, until I went to EB today and looked at the GBA section. Bleh. Out of a whole wall of games, there were maybe two or three decent games out of the bunch that were worth buying. About a third

  • SONY Clie as portable gaming machine (Score:4, Interesting)

    by cloudless.net ( 629916 ) on Friday June 13, 2003 @02:20AM (#6188768) Homepage
    I have always wondered why doesn't SONY put a direction pad and game buttons on Clie PDAs. The Clies have 320x320, 16-bit color screens, plus a 200Mhz CPU. Should be more than capable for running great games.
    • Because then business people wouldn't take it seriously. As it is, PDAs have only tenuous business usefulness, the technology hasn't progressed much past "fancy address book and status symbol for the neo-techno-yuppie".

      • You should really think before you post. First of all, there are different models of the Clie. There could be a separate model for gaming. Second, why are you making blanket statements like that? PDAs are plenty useful for lots of things. Just because you don't find them useful doesn't make that true for everyone.

        Personally, I think the grandparent post has it completely right. Why isn't the PSP a Clie with game controls? I would buy that in a second.
        • While I'm not a fan of PalmOS for my PDA, I think the PalmOS would make a better platform for programming games than do most consoles. I mean, if Sony wants me to spend $200 on a portable console, it better be pretty damn powerful- a lot more than my GBA. There's no reason you couldn't have a 100-200 MHz ARM-based PDA and gaming machine that went for $200, with a decent dpad/button configuration.

          After all, that other company is doing it with the Helix. [pcworld.com] I don't think they've released the specs on the POS
    • I have always wondered why doesn't NOKIA put a direction pad and game buttons on 6150 phones. The 6150s have 160x160, 16-bit color screens, plus a fast CPU. Should be more than capable for running great games.

      Moral of the story: sticking chicken feathers up your butt doesn't make you a chicken. Nintendo knows what they're doing, hopefully Sony does too.

  • no original psx games? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by u-238 ( 515248 )
    "Because Sony's PSP will not play existing PlayStation games..."

    I know that you wont be able to just pop in a PSX game and play that, they're doing it in a mini-disc format called a UMD [lik-sang.com], which is like a DVD mini disc cartridge.

    But I thought they were going to convert some of their flagshipt psx games to mini disc (umd) format, so you could play the originals on the PSP.

    Was I mistaken, or is this articles context misleading?

  • Price has to come down (Score:5, Insightful)

    by AvantLegion ( 595806 ) on Friday June 13, 2003 @03:23AM (#6188955) Journal
    Sony will find that too few people are willing to spend that kind of money for a portable system.

    I've whipped out $99 for my Game Boy Advance SP, yes. But that's about as high as I'll go for something that I only really play when I'm in line at the post office, or stuck on campus between classes, etc.

    When I'm at home, I'm playing a regular console on my TV with my surround sound system. I won't sit and play a portable system.

    Sony has been riding high from the PSX and PS2, but this is the point where it SEEMS like they can do no wrong, and badly overestimate what's coming. At that price point, the PSP will badly undersell. Hopefully, Sony will adjust on the fly. They'll still do a hell of a lot better than that N-Gage nonsense.

    • >>> Sony will find that too few people are willing to spend that kind of money for a portable system.

      That's just the launch price. Price will go down eventually.

      Is anyone willing to pay $150+ for a portable game player? I don't know. If I told you 2 years ago that a million people will pay $300-500 for a portable MP3 player, you'll probably think I'm smoking crack.

      Then came the iPod.

      All things considered, by the time PSP ships (if it's on schedule), the GBA SP will be going for $70 or less, wit

      • Is anyone willing to pay $150+ for a portable game player? I don't know. If I told you 2 years ago that a million people will pay $300-500 for a portable MP3 player, you'll probably think I'm smoking crack.

        Then came the iPod.

        You have a bit of a point. Yet, I could justify the money for a portable MP3 player far more so than a portable game system. I take my Archos everywhere - I can use it pretty much constantly. The Game Boy requires my focused attention to use, thus making it a bit less useful.

        I

        • >>>
          I don't know that the two devices necessarily hold up to direct comparison.
          >>
          In contrast, the portable gaming market is a long-existant and stabilized one. Many devices have come and gone, and pretty much succeeded and failed around that $100 price point.

          I'm sure we can all agree that $99 is the magical price point for critical mass consumption. I do have a hard time believe the PSP can ever reach a $99 price point within 3 yrs of its launch since it has TFT LCD and an optical drive.

          But
          • I don't disagree with anything you said. :)

            I will counterpoint one thing slightly, though, about Nintendo doing less than great with their GameCube despite having the cheaper price. You're right, of course, but I think there's a very notable distinction between Nintendo as a home console manufacturer and Nintendo as a portable manufacturer. The former has not been very successful since the Super NES. The latter has been successful since, well, their first product. Consumers clearly make a distinction betw

  • The ALL IN ONE!!! (Score:5, Funny)

    by NickMc2000 ( 614182 ) on Friday June 13, 2003 @03:55AM (#6189044)
    "Like the toy-like GameCube and the movie-playable PlayStation (PS) 2, Game Boy will remain the leading handheld game machine while PSP will become more like a network-capable electronic gadget." I don't believe that the dvd capability of the PlayStation 2 is the reason why it is at number one versus the games. Also, this article makes the PSP seem much more like a pda than a gaming machine. I just don't see the impetus to shell out all that dough and abandoning the gameboy, which I have games from ten years back, to get a coglomonated device when I have all of those functions taken care of in individual entities. Now I will get a little off topic and admit that this is just another ploy of Sony's to gain world domination. With the psx, hopefully, it will be present in every home, documenting media exchange. The RIAA will back Sony as its secret police ubduct any pirates. Then, through shadow corporations it will slowly take over national governments throught the UN. Or, it could crash and then Microsoft will take over.
  • Most GBA games are around 40 Euro, GC/Xbox/PS2 games around 55 Euro. True, in addition GBA games come on a cartridge which has a higher production cost than a DVD.

    On the other hand, with the amount of SNES games re-released for the GBA and possibly less content creation (no huge 3D worlds, music scores etc.) for handheld games, the margin should be fairly healthy.
    And as it is with Nintendo ruling the handheld market, it must be like printing money for them right now.

    So the incentive for Sony to get a shar
  • I stand by my original comment:

    Think of how glorious it must have been for Hiroshi Yamauchi to watch every competitor over the years fail pitifully to make any dent in the Gameboy market. "Lynx, Turboexpress, GameGear, Wonderswan, Nomad, Neo Geo Pocket? All of them are nothing now, all of them are dust!!!" (Apologies to Lord Garth, "Whom the gods destroy," Star Trek:TOS) -- Re:I, for one, will be very sad... [slashdot.org]

    • You forgot the Virtual Boy :P Oh well, at least Nintenod's failed experiment with the VB led to their "why mess with a good thing" approach to GB development.
      • True, but Game Boy's eating of the Virtual Boy was sort of cannibalistic, after all. No joy for Hiroshi Yamauchi in that.

        I feel sorry for Gunpei Yoko [virtual-boy.org], he deserved better than that as his swan song. After all, he did create Metroid...

        Wow, hey, he was also responsible for the Wonderswan! So, Game Boy, Metroid, Virtual Boy (well, a low point obviously), and Wonderswan... what a career! If only he hadn't had his life tragically cut short.

  • I think one of the reasons (besides being he earliest releasal) that the Playstation2 did so hot was the fact that it had backwards compatibility. Well...Nintendo already has that...Sony's won't. That's a major hit against them right there. I think that Sony has been riding their high horse for too long. Oh...and if playing GB means playing a kid's toy...I sure as hell know a bunch of 15-25 year old kids.

  • Besides the cool-ness factor, this unit may have a very good selling point. Unlike the gameboy series [which is teetering on the edge of archaic] this offers a whole new advantage: something not teathered to cross-compatible cartridges. This will encourage new, modern game developers to develop for this unit, unlike the same old garbage every gameboy seems to be littered with (the ubiquitous Nickelodeon games and street fighter).
  • I am a Nintendo fan, but I have to admit that a portable game/movie/music player for around $200 sounds very appealing. When I travel I would only need one gadget on the plane.

    Oh and I am so tired of the argument that Nintendo isn't selling as well because the games are for kids. I play a game because it is fun not because I get to shoot a zombie instead of saving a princess.

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