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PSP Pricing, Competitiveness Analyzed
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."
"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...
sigs are dumb.
"Nintendo doesn't have a cool enough image to appeal to an older audience," Nikko's Fukuda said.
"What it should do is hold fast to the under-15 age group and create killer franchises based on cartoons or characters which can also be featured in card games."
Worst. Advice. Ever.
It's not stupid. It's advanced.
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 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, 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?
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.
"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 share of this market should be sufficiently high. Are they trying to dampen analysts' expectations because they expect Nintendo to be a harder fight this time than they were with the PS1 vs. N64?
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
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.
-- shi-mo-foe --
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.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
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 don't know that the two devices necessarily hold up to direct comparison. Granted, you're just trying to make a point by example. But let's also point out that the iPod was really a first generation product of its kind (CDR and removable media MP3 players are known to be inferior even to the general mindless public). 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 think any product that comes into the market and tries to overshoot that price by a healthy margin is going to struggle.
You're right, it is just an initial price point. But the thing is, Nintendo isn't going to take the competition lying down. They price their portables at the established price points in the market ($99 and below). Doing so has met every new iteration of their hardware with instant success. Amazingly, even a more expensive re-design of an existing product (the GBA SP) was met with overwhelmingly high sales.
You're also right about the "too early, we gotta see the hardware" stuff. I make no claims as to how good of a product the PSP will be. All I'm saying is that even a superior product will struggle to gain market share if their price exceeds $100 by very much. They can always cut it down later, sure. But 5 gets you 10 that Nintendo enters the market with their new device at a lower price than the PSP, and enjoys much more early success (barring, of course, a flawed product).
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 of the games there were rehashed games that I already own on my SNES, and the other two thirds were awful, awful, crappy, awful kiddie games showcasing the Olsen twins, Rugrats, Hamtaro (whatever the hell Hamtaro is), and any variety of other cutesy characters invented to amuse 5 year old kids. In fact, the only games that I even remotely considered buying were Megaman & Bass, Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow, and the Sega Arcade pack with Outrun, Space Harrier and others.
If it wasn't for gullible parents oblivious about video games, the GBA wouldn't be selling any of this shovelware.
I still think Sony and Nokia are relying too much on peer pressure, but I sure hope this convinces people to stop making crap for the GBA.
-"One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man." -EH