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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.
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.