PSP sales has been slow, in USA at least, but it didn't hide the fact that this device is aging. According to Sony, pirates has been the biggest problem for this handheld. Numerous things tried by Sony to stop pirating, some of those include the introduction of download only PSPgo which failed miserably.
Another effort is that Sony will provide developers a protective code which give them a 60 days protection before the software eventually hacked. This is just an idea today, we still don't know whether it will be working against piracy.
Anyway let's forget about piracy for a moment. If there is no piracy for, does Sony need a new and better PSP?
From close competitor and technological point of view, Nintendo announced 3DS which will be available by next year, a device with I convince is a lot better graphic, processing power and new features. And let's not forget that PSP technology is somewhat behind Apple's iPhone and iPod touch. Apple who is a new player in the market has its momentum because iPhone is just so popular in United States and it is becoming a major competitor to be considered by Sony.
With competition growing fierce, Sony will have to launch a new PSP sooner rather than later.
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SONY is lying, In fact pirates are the best thing happened to this console. Many people buy PSP just to play games using emulators, and many buy it to use other homebrew applications (like E-book reader), Maybe pirates are one of the problems for PSP games, but not PSP. And they're definitely not the biggest problem. Piracy has been there since the NES era. But these days, it's easy to blame piracy for all your misfortune, and everyone actually does. Piracy's been there for the world's most selling games (like the Sims, or Half-Life) but that didn't stop those games from selling.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, that 60 days protection is IMO the best way to encounter pirates. If it works.
I don't think SONY will back down because of competition. Many gamers hate iphone, SONY has to decide to aim their games at hardcore gamers rather than casual gamers. Because casual gamers don't care what they're playing, as long at they've got something to fill their time with. And since everyone's got an iphone for some reason I can't even guess, they'll play their games on iphone. SONY has to let gamers play some real games on their consoles. I've got both PSP and DS, and my father has an iphone, and IMO PSP is the best of them...
I hope SONY does good in the next generation of consoles, this generation was the worst generation ever.
Yes, they won't back down. I think they are preparing for PSP 2 soon. They have to. Even though Apple is more to casual game and they have no first party developers, the growth in their gaming section scares the shit of Sony and Nintendo, and Apple (in their eyes) are a main competitor now.
ReplyDeleteI'm not worried about apple. the era of casual games won't last much long. I think I've read an article or something about it, it said that all these casual gamers that are buying iphone games will eventually get tired of them, they start caring more about what they play, they start picking up quality games, and they become hard-core gamers.
ReplyDeleteIf SONY doesn't change the policies and continues on releasing quality consoles and games, they'll eventually win.
My concern here is that companies would blindly try to copy apple, casual gamers would become hard-core gamers in time, and they see that no one is making any hard-core game anymore. They get tired of gaming and start doing something completely different, and then the game industry would crash. That's exactly happened in the Atari 2600 era. Too much casual games=crash.
Well, you have a point. casual gamers only play the game in iPhone two or three times. If they don't like it they won't play in anymore. Actually Sony did say it like that I am not mistaken. And developers are afraid to launch a serious hard core games in iphone right now.
ReplyDeleteSo far I haven't seen enough quality hard core games in iPhone, but I think developers are gaining confidence day after day. Phoenix Wright, DS game that I love so much will be available to iPhone soon. and I don't see why there shouldn't be anymore port from DS games to iPhone in the future.
There's a major difference between iphone and handhelds, iphone is designed to be used only for short amounts of time. Therefore hard-core gamers (which sometimes need you to play about 3 or 4 hours straight) usually buy handhelds "that's essentially a console which you can carry" to play those games. (As an example: I never use my PSP in a bus or something, I take it wherever I go, and if I see that I might have free time I start playing it for an hour or so. I also have a cellphone, and I've got plenty of games on it, but I only play them if I get extremely bored, and only for 5 minutes or so.) If you pay attention, you'll see that most games that are ported to iphone can be played in 5 minute shots (like Street Fighter or Phoenix Wright), but you'll never gonna see hard-core games like Battlefield and God of War on it, not because the hardware can't handle it, but because people won't play with their iphones for 2 or 3 hours.
ReplyDeleteThat, is what handheld manufacturers must think about, if they try to copy iphone, they'll just lose the fans they already have...
(and they ARE copying iphone, with PSP mini and DSiware)
Agreed, iPhone might not be a device for gamers just yet, in fact I'm not really interested in taking iPhone for gaming at all. Because games in iPhone sucks.
ReplyDeleteBut I think Apple do have the potential to take some market from NDS and PSP. And that potential is a big threat for Nintendo and Sony to ignore.
Consider this situation, should you have both PSP and iPhone, and let's say there is Final Fantasy 6 remake available on both console. Would you buy PSP version for, say.. 40 dollars, or would you prefer to buy iPhone version for 10 dollars?
I would read the reviews to see which one is better, and then I would buy the better one, but that's just me.
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