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EA Hot On PSP, Not Yet On DS As Results Released

Posted by simoniker on from the two-screens-worse-than-one? dept.

Thanks to GameSpot for its news that Electronic Arts is backing the Sony PSP portable and reserving judgment on Nintendo's DS, as a conference call following the company's Q4 financial results revealed "the publisher has eight to 12 titles in development for Sony's upcoming handheld console, the PSP." However, EA "haven't made any decisions" regarding support of Nintendo's recently revealed dual-screen DS. Yahoo/Reuters also has EA's software/hardware predictions for 2004, with the company expecting "price cuts to $129 from $179 in the United States on the PS2 and the Xbox by this spring, and no later than Labor Day." Elsewhere, 1UP are reporting that EA's first Xbox Live title could be on the way, as they relay an as yet unconfirmed rumor that "three different Battlefield titles are in the works, one each for the PlayStation 2, Xbox, and PC", each online-enabled and "built around a modern warfare setting instead of the historical settings of Battlefield 1942 and Battlefield Vietnam."

2 of 34 comments (clear)

  1. Well duh... by rkischuk · · Score: 4, Informative
    The PSP has been announced and out in the open for how long now, 8 months? Meanwhile, the Nintendo DS has been announced for maybe a week now?


    I'm as skeptical as the next guy about the DS, but it's completely obvious that, with an 8 month head start, a publisher's plans for a portable console are going to be much more solid for the PSP than for the DS, that they've just barely been introduced to.

    --
    Seen any BadMarketing lately?
  2. Re:Nintendo's Portable Hit Rate by BTWR · · Score: 3, Informative

    Well except for the Gameboy line Nintendo hasn't done to well with portable devices

    It's much more than that. The statement "other than the gameboy line" is not fair. Look at what they did...

    1989 - Gameboy is released, selling tens of millions of systems, despite three vastly superior (graphically) portables being available.
    1995 - Nintendo gets millions of people to buy their "Play it Loud" series of Gameboys - basically the EXACT same thing as the Gameboys that had been out for more than half a decade, but in "cool colors."
    1996 - Nintendo gets millions more to buy still-uncolored Gameboy Pocket systems. They are graphically identical to the 1989 Gameboy and their only new features are that they are thinner and use 2 batteries, not 4 (though the original Gameboy wasn't terrible with batteries. Not great, but not terrible).
    1997 - Millions more are sold when the "Gameboy (Pocket) Color" is released. This system, released a year after Super Mario 64's graphics shocked the gaming world, features games which (besides a few colors) are not much different than games released a decade earlier.
    2000 - The 100 millionth Gameboy system is sold.
    2001 - Gameboy Advance is released. Despite a huge engineering flaw (no backlight) it sells millions of units.
    2002 - The Gameboy Advance SP is released. Millions of units are sold, presumably many to people who have already given Nintendo money when they bought the identically-powerful original Gameboy Advance systems.

    So as you can see, Nintendo is a shrewd player. To say "they were able to sell a bunch of gameboys" is a huge understatement.