DS vs PSP - Developers, Press Sound Off

Sean O'Neill writes "Over at GCAdvanced.com, we've got a large feature interviewing handheld developers and gaming press about the Sony PSP and Nintendo DS. Marc Nix of IGN says: 'I think a lot of system fans and game reporters are gearing up for a big Portable System War of 2005, but the problem is, gamers traditionally haven't cared all that much about handhelds.' However, it's also pointed out that 'incredible features for the new handhelds... will undoubtedly elevate their appeal' - the article then gets responses from more than 20 developers/press on their views of the conflict to come."

Comments

The Winner

[Rie Beam]

I think the winner will be the one who comes up with a new technology in handhelds actually worth noting - I, for one, would love to see massive multiplayer handheld combat over a small area in your neighborhood / town - but it's probably just going to be rehashes of old games, since all the new ideas are in the, well, newer fields.

DS guaranteed winner

[Apreche]

The DS is a guaranteed winner. In the very best situation it rocks, has a lot of games that rock and everything is awesome. At the very worst it ends up like virtual boy, and you get to be the cool kid on the block who has a virtual boy.

Remember back in the day gameboy vs. game gear? Even Nintendo admits openly the game gear was superior technically. But gameboy won because it had Tetris. It had portable games. The PSP is going to have console games. Taking PlayStation games and making them portable will fail for the same reason that taking PC games and putting them on console systems fails so miserably. Just because you can take a game with you in the car doesn't make it a portable game in the same way that playing Quake 2 on the N64 doesn't make Quake 2 a console game. You get it? Nintendo is the only company that seems to understand this. Look at advance wars, that's a portable game. It wouldn't work any other way. But it looks like Sony is just going to try to miniaturize the playstation, and it wont work for the same reason the game gear didn't work.

Nintendo knows this. Nintendo is making portable games. Sony is making a really small console.
You can read it here, straight from the horses mouth.

Re:DS guaranteed winner

[DreadPiratePizz]

Gameboy won because it had VASTLY superior battery life. You had to put 6 AAs in the game gear, and it went through them in about 2 hours. The gameboy used 4 AAs, but got much much more life out of them. It was simply more portable.

Re:DS guaranteed winner

[AnyNoMouse]

I have a Game Gear. It has some fun games. Games that work well in a handheld format.

The biggest problem was switching batteries out every few hours of play... that gets expensive really quick unless you want to be tethered to a wall wart. I think this, more than anything else, killed the system. I'm not saying that's it's only problem, but arguably it's biggest.

The PSP will have rechargable batteries, so you don't have to worry about battery cost (at least not for another 3-4 years). The big question is the life per charge. 2 hours avg will not be enough. 8 hours (judging from the number of iPod fanatics) will probably be just fine. 16 hours is probably dreaming :-)

Once they jump the battery life hurdle, then people will start looking more seriously at the games...

Developers

[FLAGGR]

As someone who goes alot of game development, I think the DS offers more for developers, and is MUCH more appealing to program on. At first all the stuff looked gimicky, but it's really starting to grow on me. It should also be easy to program on, it's based off the same architecture as the other gameboys, which is fully documented on the internet and very easy to understand. On the other hand, anything sony has made has been difficult to program for, ask ANYONE who has, you spend way too much time reinventing the wheel and doing more micromanagment then you would think possible. They haven't said if the architecture of the PSP is the same as the PS2 yet, but I'm willing to bet it is.