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."
Who trusts Sony? (Score:2, Insightful)
After their repeated rootkits, engineered incompatibility, engineered obsolescence, higher-than-market prices, and lengthy history of consumer-hostility, why would anyone want to buy a Sony product?
I sure don't. My house is Sony free. Of course, I have had to side with the lesser of a handful of evils, but that is still better than submitting to Sony.
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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 muc
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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?
...
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!!
So let me get this straight, you have 10 games for a system you barely played? I play mine all the time and I have 14 games, and no I don't trade them in.
And you brought a remote for a BluRay player you apparently never turned on either.
No sir, I'm not buying your story.
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People buy dumb shit they never use all the time. My buddy has a bookshelf full of his DVD "collection", full of DVD cases with the security/shrinkwrap still on. Sometimes he goes down to movie trading co to trade the "old ones" (which he hasn't watched) with "new ones" (which he won't watch). And then there are all the people who got excited about the marketing for StarCraft 2, plunked down $70 for the special edition, played through 70% of the single player, played four or five online matches, got rolled
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Q.E.D. of course he's really that dumb. Which is why he's selling his extensive PS3 investment for half price, because he's vastly underwhelmed with all the extra crap his salesperson convinced him to buy at purchase.
If he's dumb enough to buy 9 launch titles and judge the system by that, well, yeah...
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I personally own an xbox360 and I have around 20-25 games for it of which I would be lucky if I play it 1 hour a month, I also bought a universal xbox remote which I used for about 30 minutes the day I bought it. I have money and I admit more often then not I buy stupid shit I will rarely use, hell I still have splinter cell conviction and now mafia 2 sitting at home unopened.
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I personally own an xbox360 and I have around 20-25 games for it of which I would be lucky if I play it 1 hour a month,
He said he hadn't turned it on in two years. That's quite different from 1 hour a month.
Re:Who trusts Microsoft? (Score:2)
You post a rant like that about Sony and then look towards Microsoft. ??? You must really be a masochist! I haven't seen Sony even come close to Microsoft; after all, Microsoft harmed an entire industry (PC)!
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I buy stuff all the time for hundreds of dollars and then just let it sit.
One of the selling points of game consoles is "what's coming in the future".
It's fun to imply people are stupid and all, but as a geek/nerd yourself who is sitting in front of a computer right now, you already understand this concept. Pity some ninny modded your post up before he really thought about what you were saying.
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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 co
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But against Apple, Sony is the lesser of two evils.
With Dell, Lenovo, Asus and Toshiba I'm paying for a decent laptop based on specs.
With Sony I'm paying for an over-egineered laptop with some added for brand recognition.
With Apple, I'm paying for something with a failure rate equivalent to a dell but more expensive then a Sony Vaio.
At least the
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PSP titles: (Score:5, Interesting)
A general criticism of handhelds. (Score:2)
I got a GBA imagining that similar types of games that appeared on the Genesis and SNES would make it to the system. Things like platformers or sports games like NHL 96 or the FIFA games with the isometric view. Instead the soccer games all seemed like pixelated abortions to me. They decided to make them use a 3d view instead of the isometric view and it didn't look good at all. Even with the DS they still look crap to me. I've always wondered why they just didn't use the old isometric engine that seem
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoGpLl-SUfk [youtube.com] =D
but the best selling PSP game is in glorious 2D (Score:2)
I know one guy who bought PSP for its excellent media/music capabilities and occasional browsing. It was like years ago.
Guy bought a single game in his life and it is "Loco Roco", pure 2D game. It is a freaky mix of jump&run with physics added. Graphics are hard core 2D.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loco_Roco [wikipedia.org]
Of course, it didn't wake up game companies... It also seems Japanese game companies didn't lose the magic.
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They decided to make them use a 3d view instead of the isometric view and it didn't look good at all.
The advantage of a 3D view over a 2D view is that a 3D view can show close-up objects to scale (hence averting the need to artificially magnify them to make, say, a pistol half the size of a person) yet still show far-away scenery.
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How is using 3D better than scaling? Scaling is a lot less work and looks just as good.
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How is using 3D better than scaling? Scaling is a lot less work and looks just as good.
By "3D" I was including scaling. Mario Kart 64 for N64 and Mario Kart Super Circuit, for example, draw the cars with scaling. (The original uses pre-scaled cels because neither the CPU nor the PPU in the Super NES was powerful enough to scale sprites.) Many of the weapons in the original Super Smash Bros. for N64 are single textured quads as well. It's just that in a pure overhead view, you can't draw both realistically sized heads and pickup items and realistically sized buildings and roads.
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You don't need scaling in a 2D game.
F-Zero for Super NES and GBA is two-dimensional (apart from jump plates), yet it still uses scaling. If it didn't, then it'd be like Micro Machines for NES, where the player can't see far enough down the road to react to curves.
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.
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Here's what I Think Sony did when they began designing the PSP:
Sony: Hello gamer focus group, tell us what you don't like about the GBA and it's games.
Gamer focus group: They're shorter than their console brethren and they're often not the same game. Take a look at the GB Tomb Raider..it's a side scroller. They're cut down.
Sony: So you want games more like those on the PS1/PS2? Okay, Give us a couple of years.
A couple of years later:
Sony: here is the game machine you wanted.
hardcore gamer focus groups:
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The system is getting more games than the Wii is (although the phenomenal performance of Nintendo published Wii titles more than ensures the Wii is still going strong there too).
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Well if they haven't noticed, I doubt the rest of the world has or will. Your iDevices are good, I'm sure, but they don't have any physical buttons. Also they've sold about a half of the number of devices (including iPod touch) as there are Nintendo DS systems out there.
I think there are also a lot of folks who wouldn't want a toddler anywhere near their shiny, expensive toys. I sure as hell wouldn't...
Hmm (Score:2, Insightful)
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The PSP sold 60million units, for reference, that is more units then either Xbox360(~42mil), PS3(~37mil) or iPhone (~50mil). It of course is still just second place behind the NintendoDS(~133mil) and its game offering can be rather lacking, but in terms of raw sales I would call it quite a huge success.
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This data just convinces me that the industry manufactured console hardcore gaming market is about to pop. Kinect will sell them another 10mil if they're lucky.
No true Scotsman (Score:3, Informative)
The iphone has no buttons. Not a true gaming console.
The assertion that button presence defines a console sounds silly to me. A PC has even more buttons than an Xbox 360 with four controllers plugged into it. So is the PC "a true gaming console" to you? What about mobile phones running Android OS, many of which have a texting keyboard? I'd like to clear up no true Scotsman fallacies [wikipedia.org] and get Layne's Law of Debate [c2.com] out of the way so that we can know what each other is talking about.
Re:No true Scotsman (Score:4, Informative)
The iPhone/iPod touch/iPad are not primarily intended to be portable consoles. They are, respectively, a smartphone, a PDA and a tablet. They happen to play games and they have accumulated a large library over time (enough to advertise as a feature) but they are no more consoles than the Palm V or the Nokia N900 are. I think that a comparison between portable consoles makes the most sense when all involved devices were designed and intended as portable consoles. For instance, a lot of iPhone buyers bought it as a smartphone and not for its gaming capabilities (although I do admit that the PS3 has a similar problem as some people buy it just as a Blu-ray player.).
Semantics aside, more relevant to the discussion is that the NDS had easily twice as many sales as the PSP. In fact, the measuring stick would be the original Game Boy series (Game Boy/Pocket/Color/Light). It's widely known as a raging success, having enjoyed good sales on virtually unchanged hardware for a full decade.
Using Nintendo's 2008 annual financial report [nintendo.com] as a source we see that in 2008 Nintendo has sold about 81 million Game Boy Advances and about 119 million classic Game Boys. Even if we assume that the classic Game Boy continued to get sales it's unlikely to be far above 120 million units today. So Nintendo has sold more DSes in six years than classic Game Boys in twelve years (assuming that all classic Game Boy sales stopped when the GBA was introduced in 2001). The PSP doesn't even measure up against the Game Boy Advance although it's newer and can still overtake it. It's obvious that the NDS fares tremendously better in the market than the PSP does.
Also of interest are the other figures: As of 2008, Nintendo sold 25 million Wiis, 22 million Gamecubes, 33 million N64s, 49 million SNESes and 62 million NESes. Even allowing for the Wii being new and the N64 and the GameCube being failures, this illustrates that stationary consoles don't sell as many units as portable ones. The markets seem to behave differently, thus a direct comparison between the respective sales numbers may be pointless.
Add controller sales to console sales (Score:3, Insightful)
at launch Apple didn't allow third-party software
Apple has done been plenty of launches since then: iPhone 3G and iPod touch 2 ("There's an app for that"), iPhone 3GS and iPod touch 3 (faster CPU), and now iPhone 4 (retina display).
They happen to play games and they have accumulated a large library over time (enough to advertise as a feature) but they are no more consoles than the Palm V or the Nokia N900 are. I think that a comparison between portable consoles makes the most sense when all involved devices were designed and intended as portable consoles.
If game developers have largely abandoned a portable console (in this case PSP and PSP Go) in favor of a platform that handles gaming well yet is not originally designed as a portable console (in this case iPhone and iPod Touch), then having been originally designed as a portable console isn't much of a bullet point. Besides, e
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The iphone is a phone, it is designed to function well as a phone and general purpose mini-tablet at the expense of its gaming capabilities.
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Maybe it's more a matter of my usage patterns, but I'd say that my iPhone functions far better as a gaming device than as an actual phone. I don't have huge dropped call issues (but I'm rarely talking on the phone), but I'll use my iPhone to kill a bit of time very often throughout the day.
The original iPhone was definitely not a device designed for gaming, though it became quite capable at doing so with the second version of the OS which allowed third-party software. As noted above, the hardware improvemen
Misleading headline and summary (Score:3, Insightful)
Headline should have been "Sony to change focus to younger audience - targets Nintendo's market" - with the submitter's opinion stated *after* the summary of the linked article (start quote at 2nd sentence if you want to be lazy).
Where does the actual source article say anything about Sony losing ground?
How does the submitters' description of Nintendo doing exactly the same thing somehow lend support to that story? Sony's story, which is not contradicted by IG in their article, is not dissimilar - they're strong in one market, better than ever, but wish to grow on their weak markets (i.e: focus on your competitors' market for growth, not the market you own and saturated already).
This summary has almost nothing to do with the linked articles, and it's 90% opinion from the submitter (donniebaseball23)
I happen to agree with his opinion on both Sony's rationale and their chances, but that's not really 'news' and it misrepresents the actual 'news' part as if this is what something Sony admitted to, or actually stated as IndustryGamers' analysis.
The professionalism of Slashdot editors... what is the job description again?
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They aren't doing the same thing as Nintendo, they are doing what Nintendo did 5 years ago. Nintendo now is about pushing new technology (3D) and providing a gaming experience which is more clearly distinguished from what mobile phones can deliver.
Sony are idiots for not using an appropriate strategy at an appropriate time ... they really can't afford to hype 3D for consoles and TV and then pretend it's irrelevant for handhelds, it won't work. Nintendo is going to slaughter them again, this time using Sony'
Uh oh! (Score:2, Funny)
You better get those PSP sales up, Marcus, or it's right back to the orphanage for you!
PSP Go messed it all up (Score:3, Insightful)
Nobody I know with a PSP has upgraded to the PSP Go. It just doesn't make sense.
You can't play a game, complete it then trade it in for another game. The games shops lose and the customer loses too.
Before launch it was said that you would be able to swap a PSP UMD for a digital version for the PSP Go. This didn't happen, so it made migration expensive if you had an existing UMD collection.
Another problem is downloads, your PSP Go has to sit there while you download the game, which could be hours.
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Re:PSP Go messed it all up (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah a downloadable as a lot of advantages: it can be revoked at will, when you change console you can be forced to pay for it once more. The publisher can also sell it at the same price as the physical media.
Very convenient indeed.
Re:PSP Go messed it all up (Score:5, Insightful)
Why is it a problem for you to wait a few hours for a download.
Because what you call "a decent connection" isn't available everywhere, especially out in the country once the farm chores are done. It's faster to ship a UMD across the United States than to download it over satellite or cellular, especially given that three to six full-UMD games would eat up 100% of the 5 to 10 GB/mo caps that all wireless Internet providers impose.
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Downloading is becoming harder and harder. ISPs here in the US are not upgrading jack except for fees and bandwidth surcharges. Combine that with the fact that in general, connections are more saturated making reliably downloading something more problematic, and one finds that a download-only format isn't going to work just yet.
What I see happening is that future games on consoles will require two things. A cartridge or CD/DVD/BD-ROM which is bundled with a CD key, and a required download to activate the
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Why is it a problem for you to wait a few hours for a download. You need to go out and buy a UMD game, or get someone else to deliver it for you. With a decent connection, a download s always quicker and more convenient!
Of course this isn't really a big problem for the PSPGo.
One big glaring problem though, often overlooked, is that you need a PS3 to get your games.
Which is pretty stupid.
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The games shops lose and the customer loses too.
Luckily, Sony doesn't about either of those groups.
Sony's position is its own fault (Score:5, Informative)
The PSP's dead man walking state is completely due to Sony's ineptitude. I blame is on corporate ego, after winning two console generations in a row the attitude seemed to be that they could just push their way and gamers would just fall lock step into whatever Sony "blessed" them with, regardless of price, features or support. While pushing all the "features" that the hardcore audience would appreciate, they completely neglected the most important features, games. Gran Turismo portable for instance was demo'ed at the PSP launch announcement and was even featured on the box but didnt ship until last year. The rate of first party titls has been anemic since it launched and the 3rd party support has been shrinking. Piracy can be partially to blame but an equal blame should be laid at Sony's feet for not focusing on the right aspects of the device and supporting it properly. UMD was stillborn, which IMHO was a missed opportunity, I would have gladly paid for a UMD player for the house or car but Sony for some reason chose to keep it locked up deeming the format useless, yet rather than focus on the gaming they chose to advertise it as this do everything media device while basically downplaying its gaming prowess. As a result the much less capable DS has completely buried the PSP despite the inferior hardware.
I have been trying for months to sell a PSP bundle with over 2 dozen games (admittedly nothing as recent as the last year and a half or so) and cant get any interest at any value more than the joy of taking outside and stomping the crap out of it.
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I think the Nintendo 3DS does look very promising and from what I've seen it may be the PSP killer
They don't have to kill the PSP. The PSP isn't a threat to anything but sony.
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...
PSP Go (Score:2)
Thanks to that idiotic idea of removing UMD reading hardware, we could sell our used Sony PSP (not slim even) in 15 mins on Japanese eBay (or similar) site.
It took 15 minutes. No kidding, in Japan market, people bought 2x older generation that fast. I actually laughed at Japanese friend who claimed he can sell it easier than Europe. Well, he did.
Also let me tell you even a funnier thing. If you buy the new "hi tech" PSP which relies on online store... Well, good luck since online store is not global! I mean
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yes, solid state is cheap...now, but it wasn't when the PSP launched over 5 years ago. That's why they went disc, they had to.
And so id regular firmware, in version 3.30....over 3 years ago.
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The iOS platform is a definite threat in the casual games sector. In that sense, Nintendo has a lot more to be worried about than Sony. It's a no-brainer, iOS devices will rule the roost when it comes to "simple" games.
Sony Computer Entertainment: The Trailbazer? (Score:2)
When?
Please list successful innovations and dates. I'm really curious.
cellphones? (Score:2)
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No not really (Score:3, Insightful)
There are two problems with cellphones as a primary gaming platform, one that you really can't fix:
1) Controls. Cellphones are not well suited to games. The reason the gamepad has endured is not coincidence, it is a good tool for the job. Yes you can add a gamepad, but that makes the phone much larger and people don't like that one bit. While the problem isn't completely unsolvable, it is difficult.
2) Battery life. When you do anything else with your phone, you drain the battery. There are no new magic batt
What I saw (Score:2)
While I personally never really felt the need to buy something like a PSP their target market seemed very narrow: gullible rich kids/young adults who did not mind being locked into Sony's proprietary formats.
If they wanted to lock people into formats they needed to put out some very cheap type units. Get the public hooked with a loss-leader or break even type unit that would then have them wanting to buy the high end units.
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*sigh* "locked into Sony's proprietary formats" vs. what exactly? DS with its locked in platform? What mobile gaming platorm isn't locked in?
Dedicated Gaming devices:
Sony PSP: Systems Proprietary and not licensed, Games: Pay to develop for / license required
Nintendo GameBoy/DS: Systems Proprietary and not licensed, Games: Pay to develop for / license required
Sony PS3 (Disc Content): Systems Proprietary and not licensed, Games: Pay to develop
The problem with the PSP in a nutshell (Score:2)
The games out on the PSP just don't play well on a tiny screen. They're designed for a big TV and controllers. When sony shoehorns the game in to a tiny form factor it just becomes clumsy and irritating. In my opinion the DS is no different. Portable game devices with 4" screens have no real staying power.
It is all about fun. (Score:2, Interesting)
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Re:Trailblazer? (Score:5, Informative)
Have you not seen the PSP Go and what a big mess up it is?
This sums it up, paying more and getting less:
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/reviews/2009/10/psp-go-review-sony-is-charging-you-much-more-for-much-less.ars [arstechnica.com]
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Have you not seen the PSP Go and what a big mess up it is? This sums it up, paying more and getting less:
Question is how many did they sell? If they sold a metric assload of them (at a profit obviously), I doubt Sony would care *what* the critics thought...
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http://www.tomsguide.com/us/PSP-PSP-Go-PSP2-PlayStation-3DS,news-7016.html [tomsguide.com]
Failure.
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Question is how many did they sell? If they sold a metric assload of them (at a profit obviously), I doubt Sony would care *what* the critics thought...
Actually, in Japan, they still haven't sold the first shipment of PSPGo.
I'm not sure about USA, but that's surely the case too, given the really poor sales in NPD.
And in Europe, like in USA, PSP is dead since a very long time.
The problem is not the hardware, they've sold 60 millions of them. The problem is that the primary source of revenue is the software sales, and PSP software sales are dead since a very long time, despite countless hits released on PSP, which all flop.
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Ha! I'd love to come last if it meant selling 60 million handhelds.
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Ha! I'd love to come last if it meant selling 60 million handhelds.
While I suspect that the PSP is probably in the black and making money quite comfortably for Sony at this point, I'd be wary of making blanket statements like that in general.
From what I remember, MS are still in the red on the XBox 360, despite the fact that it's been around for almost 5 years and seems to be very popular. (Remember that it's MS's *second* generation console, and one would expect them to be recovering some of the costs of market entry which would have been more tolerable on the original
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More than two (Score:2)
Three different major companies market their respective handheld devices as video game players: Nintendo DS, PSP by Sony, and iPod touch by Apple. The iPod touch runs the same games as the iPhone.
The "open" handhelds such as GP32, GP2X, Pandora, etc., all failed to even get retail distribution in the United States.
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That's hardly being fair to the N-Gage, Pandora, GP2X, Gizmondo, or the other countless handhelds that nobody remembers.
Just because there are only 2 good competitors, that doesn't mean that there are only 2 competitors.
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You missed:
Sega Saturn: First console with a 3D Graphics Processor. However, only just barely, as the PlayStation was released a month later in Japan. This happened in late 1994.
In North America, the Saturn's graphics processor was weaker and the system was $100 more expensive than the PlayStation console.
It was also released with no warning by Sega (they literally said at E3 "on sale today") to which Sony's president gave his famous "$299." speech. The PlayStation ended up launching 3 months after the S
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NEC TurboGrafx-16: first console with a CD-ROM add-on
Wrong. The CD-i was the first console to have a CD player.
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- Nintendo DS: first console with a touch screen
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Tiger Game.com actually. It was better than it should have been, but mismanaged. It really could have been something. It also had internet access.
Re:Trailblazer? (Score:5, Insightful)
So, what trailblazing has Sony actually done for consoles?
Sony's innovations aren't really developed with the consumer in mind. The Universal Media Disc, memory sticks, ATRAC-only music players, etc. are all, in varying degrees of blatant-ness, attempts by Sony to drive people into using Sony's own proprietary systems. They announce them as if they're "consumer innovations"; but I imagine the spokespeople have to practice in front of a mirror for a while to be able to keep a straight face when saying that.
You really have to wonder what goes on in the minds of that company's leaders. What other company would develop a PC rootkit and then act surprised when people rebelled?
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.
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You really have to wonder what goes on in the minds of that company's leaders.
Possible explanation: we'll try to get them hooked on Sony at younger ages, they'll go for the next-gen sony-es when they'll grow.
If that's indeed what are they thinking, there might be a small flaw in their rationing: the sponsors for kids console/games are the parents - the marketing message should be directed towards them.
Re:Trailblazer? (Score:4, Insightful)
I would argue that Sony's innovations are developed with consumers in mind, but are implemented with Sony's micromanagement needs in mind. I can't think of a Sony technology that was bad per se. ATRAC isn't bad. Memory Stick Duo isn't bad. Betamax isn't bad. I suppose UMD isn't even bad. But Sony can't help but control the consumer's use of that technology. Sony doesn't know how to just sit back and let go. You did mention the PC root kit finally. That's one move I still don't understand after all these years.
No kidding (Score:4, Informative)
The original PS was a good console not because Sony blazed a new path but because they didn't. Sony put together a bunch of good, largely off the shelf hardware, for a good price. An important factor was using CD-ROM when Nintendo stayed cartridge. While it had loading times, it brought unit costs of the games down a whole lot. The electronics in cartridges ate up a non-trivial amount of the sale price, especially as they got larger. Also the PS was very easy to program for. It has a MIPS R3000a processor, a GPU that works much like PC GPUs, video decompression hardware that works with standard formats (at the time), sound chip very similar to the SNES chip (which Sony made) and that largely worked like more advanced Amiga MOD files and so on. Because the unit itself was a good price, the CDs allowed for good profit on the games, and it was easy to develop for, developers loved it.
The PS2 did blaze more trails, I suppose, with the Emotion Engine, but that was a piece of shit. It succeed inspite of that, not because of it. It was difficult to program for. However the large library of PS1 games helped it sell well and companies target the big platforms. Also the other consoles of that generation weren't great showings. The Gamecube just didn't catch on with many people and the X-box was over a year late to the game, not to mention being made by a newcomer to the videogame market. Plus Sony was able to secure some important exclusives, meaning you had to have their hardware to play some hot games.
The PS3? Well we all see how well that's doing. Sales of the console itself haven't been good and game sales have been weaker still. Many people get them "Because it is a blu-ray player," which is fine and all but games are when bring in the big money for consoles, not the hardware (sometimes that is even a money loser). Programmers are having difficulty using the Cell so often times many SPUs sit inactive, meaning that the game could potentially be better but isn't. For that matter the Cell itself was a mistake they refused to admit. It was supposed to be the graphics chip. However it turned out that it was nowhere near as capable as modern GPUs. Rather than throw it out they repurposed it as a CPU. This also meant they were behind on getting a chip designed for them, and so their GPU is sub optimal (normally you want to share system and video RAM in a console GPU, however nVidia didn't have the time to redo the memory controller when making the RSX so it splits it like you do on a computer).
More or less Sony has fooled themselves as to why they were successful. Had they stuck with the strategy of producing good hardware from available parts, good chance they'd still be on top. No it isn't innovative but that isn't always what you want in a consumer product.
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The PS3? Well we all see how well that's doing.
Doing pretty well at 38+ million installed. [ign.com]
Sales of the console itself haven't been good and game sales have been weaker still
Looks like your info is somewhat out of date. The PS3 is right on the heels of the 360 [wikipedia.org] which had a year headstart and will probably overtake it this year or next. Sure, neither is a Wii, but then again I think that's something a lot of us are glad of.
You're serious? (Score:5, Insightful)
Sony brought gaming to a much wider audience than Sega or Nintendo had managed before. Remember the first Wipeout? Remember how wowed everyone was that they could listen to Progidy and chemical brothers whilst they race? Suddenly gaming was cool amongst nightclub going 20-somethings, not just kids and geeks. They created Gran Turismo, a game with a level of depth and wealth of content that no one had been able to match. They pushed Tony Hawk's Skateboarding, gave FFVII a huge marketing pushes. In every area the PS1 was pushing gaming in new directions and providing rich experiences.
Maybe you weren't part of the generation who grew up watching the consoles go from 8bit to 16bit to 32bit but I find it amazing anyone could brush off Sony's acheivements with both the PS1 and PS2.
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Marketing,
I don't mean that in a bad way. The PS1 marketing was phenomenal, and was targeted at 'cool' people. I don't remember many of the specifics, but somehow Sony single-handedly made computer games cool. That's an impressive achievement.
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The only reason Sony could bring all those things is because they are a big international company with tons of cash flow and manufactures.
That's also why analysts always assumed Sony and MS would be the victors this gen instead of Nintendo, which still is a very small company compared to these behemoths.
It's easy to forget because Nintendo made profits like never seen before in this console generation, while the two others lost billions of dollars of money.
I think also that's why what Sony has done is nothi
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you do know, the original playstation controller was just a snes controller with an extra l/r button on each side yes?
Dual shock was in response to how popular the analog stick on the n64 was.
Personally I find the gamecube controller the most comfortable of any controller around, but that's personal preference. using the d-pad on the ps2/3 controllers are a pain in comparison.
Re: (Score:2)
personally i cant use a dual shock (or pre-analog PS controller) for more then 15 minutes before my hands cramp up and i have to stop playing, it is one of the (many) reasons i have not bothered with a playstation since i got rid of the psone
Personally i prefer the xbox 360 controller to pretty much any other controller out there
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How tall are you? Really, I want to know, because it' from what it seems to me, that bigger guys tend to prefer the Xbox controllers. To me the Xbox-foo controllers are simply too big and uncomfortable, give me a Dual Shock any day, course, I'm just under 5' 6" tall.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Sony's "core" audience has already abandoned them for jobs and taking care of their families, and it is time to get a new one (i.e. focus on the kids, who can be easily won over with a couple marketing dollars and a hip spokeskid)
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I suspect a lot of Nintendo's appeal to "older" gamers is rooted in goodwill from the past and nostalgia.
I bought a Nintendo DS Lite when it came out because had more interesting-looking "pick up and play" style titles that appealed to me when the PSP's "home console style games on a handheld" didn't.
FWIW, nostalgia had nothing to do with it- I always had a vague dislike of Nintendo due to their Disney-meets-Barney style characters, and I never grew up with them (here in the UK, the original NES was *never* particularly big nor culturally significant, mostly because Nintendo never really gave a toss about ma
Re: (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.
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Built-in buttons wear out though. I'd rather see devices that support good add-on devices. The iTouch is shaped well for it but Apple seems to make it difficult somehow as we've seen few authorized add-ons. Probably the biggest fault with iDevices is it's weak hardware accessory ecosystem.
Myst (Score:3, Insightful)
I just don't like having to draw on a screen to play my game.
Then anybody who has played a PC game relying on a mouse has different tastes from you. Graphical adventures such as Myst sold millions on PC, even if the DS port might have been crap.
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I like a bit of sex and violence in my escapism from time to time. That somehow makes me a child in your eyes? denying that sort of content completely does limit what's available and will continue to limit (in my eyes) Nintendo to the cuddly, fluffy, family-friendly image.
Which is great, and hell, they'll get a lot of sales because of it. But not all of us are family-friendly people.
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One reason why the DS continues to be more popular is piracy. Getting pirate games to run on a PSP requires hardware modding...
Eh? I know a couple of guys that just ran a software hack on their PSPs and were able to play compressed ISOs of PSP games. No need to purchase a 'cheap cart'.
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For the record, the Sega GameGear is still my favourite portable gaming device and, yes, I still have one.
Did you get stock in eveready at the same time? Christ they were mean on batteries.... backlit screen was nice, though.
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The invizimals camera is not the equal to the Chotto Shotto/Go Cam in capability.
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Casual vs. real games isn't an either/or situation ... there is a real market for real games on a handheld with real controls ... it might not be the bigger market, but it's a pretty fucking sizeable one.
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What is killing Sony is the fact that they are in a dinosaur mentality. Yes, it took half a decade for the PS3 to get breached, and they have top of the line security. They had this mentality since the Network Walkman days. People would look at their devices (which had an excellent form factor), hear about the annoying DRM restrictions that were in your face (can't copy songs to the device, had to check them out, and that was only if the device was authorized to do so, no ability to back up stored music
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Bullshit.
I love to be able to run homebrew as much as the next guy, probably more, but if you think for a second that it would distort the market in Sony's favour you're deluded.
As for doing poorly compared to the competition - 38 million units isn't too bad in anyone's book, and isn't all that far beind MS's 47. The wii is far and away the leader but you're going to have to try very hard to persuade me that the availability of WiiQuake, OpenTyrianWii and a couple of SNES emulators for the homebrew channel
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