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Sony PSP/Nintendo DS Opinion Piece
Mr Nash writes "The Armchair Empire has posted a lengthy op-ed about Sony's PSP and Nintendo's Dual Screen where the writer comes to the conclusion that "the market just doesn't appear to be ready for a pair of new handhelds to step onto the scene."
It does seem a bit soon for yet another new gaming system, especially a portable one. Still, consumers in general are a cryptic crowd, and while predictions can be made, they arent always correct. Look at the success of the Deer Hunter series...how many millions of those horrible games were sold? For some strange reason there was an appeal to the american consumer, and the game lived on and on and on... Only time will tell for sure if Mr. Nunavut is correct.
Old news for the fans who have been tracking down those devices for a long time.
(I would like an explanation about how a brilliant Super Mario 64 port is a bad thing.)
When sony will spill the beans about the psp price? Battery life was already kicked into the developers yard, so I expect that most games will have small load times before gameplay (2-10 seconds) so they can put on the game box "Expected battery life: 3 hours".
Interesting times.
Just like when they said the iPod would be a failure... right!
It's like the iPod. The iPod is doomed.
People are just not ready to spend hundreds of dollars for a portable music player when they can just as well listen to the music at home.
Or they use their MD-Player or Discman the bought just a few years ago.
Nobody will buy another music player.
I don't need a signature.
I wouldn't be so sure that the market isn't ready for new portable gaming devices. The "desktop" console market has been operating on a much faster cycle than the handheld market. Handhelds are traditionally cheaper and have more of a tradition of backwards compatibility, so there's no reason why consumers can't be persuaded to buy a new one every couple of years. The gameboy was supreme for years, Nintendo almost certainly hoped that the GBA could manage a similar feat. After all, they hadn't had an even vaguely serious challenge to their monopoly in this market since the Game Gear, over a decade ago, and even that was seen off quite easily.
However, all that has changed. The N-Gage was a flop in terms of sales, games and design, but it did drive up technical expectations of consoles. Once Sony started sniffing around the market, Nintendo didn't really have much choice but to offer a new device. So far, we've mostly been hearing the Nintendo fanboys ranting about how the DS will see off the PSP and Nintendo will remain supreme. In the very short term future, this might be true.
However...
Sony (and even Nokia) have deeper pockets than Nintendo. If they want to make a serious assault on the market, they can afford to do so over a period of several years. They can afford to research, develop and release a new product every couple of years. Indeed, Nokia have already announced their intention to continue to refine and enhance the N-Gage. If Nintendo don't want to be seen to be left behind in the eyes of the average consumer, they have to try and keep up. Their old strategy of putting out a winner and then milking it for years and years just won't work. This, I'm sure, is how Sony are hoping to take over the market from Nintendo. On the basis of what happened in the "desktop" console market, I think they'll eventually succeed.
The article had very little positive things to say about either side, it's almost as if the author worked on the N-Gage and was bitter...
Nintendo has said they want the DS to be a third pillar in gaming, with GCube and GBA as the other two. And the holy trinity series makes sense, or at least helps to explain they're not trying to do away with the GBA.
The PSP on the other hand has been pushed back a year....11/05 so Sony can work on the battery life. Perhaps the market will be ready then.
http://www.commaecho.com
Video gadgets require attention, and the price of low battery life or just plain high price leads to failure to adopt or abandonment. The Gameboy established itself because it had excellent battery life and a low price. I can't see these doing much of either.
Despite the hue and cry from certain parties, the U. S. economy is in pretty fair shape and still getting better. It's not dotcom-bubble level, but it's not bad. It was worse when the SP was released.
That said, I think his criticisms of both systems are pretty well on the mark, but I'm still confident that the DS will perform sufficiently to stick around. It has a large and growing library of games stretching back to the original GameBoy, in addition to the titles planned for exclusively for it. Remakes can be a bit of a drag, but remakes of good games are still good games, and many of today's gamers did not grow up with an NES. If Square decides to release their FFIII remake stateside finally, it will be a brand-new game, practically speaking, for the U. S. market.
What looks, to me, like a more interesting parallel is between the original GameBoy and the Lynx, TurboGrafx, Game Gear, and other portable consoles of the early to mid nineties. The GameBoy has consistently beaten its competitors by being good enough for a lower price. Despite all the other feaures of the PSP, I suspect that's what will happen here, too.
Canthros
I agree completely. The market is not ready for a pair of new handhelds. Therefore the most logical conclusion is that one of them will die out.
To hit the high points, lets start with his conclusion.
The latest Nintendo handheld platform (the Gameboy Advance) launched in 2000 (the SP is just prettier, not more functional -- it's the same device). Clinton was President, some parts of the world still liked Americans... and we were typing away on piii 600s, with 64mb of ram. In what way are we not ready to move on? Of course we're ready for a new platform, and maybe even a new idea or two (it's about damn time I had a real FPS in my pocket, and fragged others wirelessly). I'm a married man with a kid, I don't have too much cash to spare... but I have a GBA, a GBA SP and I'll get myself a Nintendo DS when it comes out (I'd consider the Sony, but it is beyond my price range).That's the big picture. Some smaller points:
Sony:
-he's only got 2 complaints about the PSP:
One: Battery life: Yes. But batteries get better and for all we know they'll offer a fuel-cell pack for this thing in a years time. I give Sony props for putting out the polygons.
Two: Price: He's got a point, it's expensive. But people by iPods and I think they're crazy.
Nintendo:
-His arguments against the DS make even less sense.
One: "remakes aren't innovative". New software reshaped to take advantage of a new platform using new features... the only thing that's still around is the Mario face on the box.
Two: The GBA is out there and it's cheap. F3@r this? Really? You have a gi-mungous installed base with compatible games and you're offering updates for those legacy titles when used on the new H/W (pokemon gba titles can d/l updates at the new movie, in the DS)... this is market leverage, not a liability.
I guess this guy gets recognized for maintaining his luddite-ish "I-hate-new-things" tone for the entire article, but this just means he's taken a stand, not that he's thought it through.
This article doesn't pay attention to the biggest reason companies are going after the portable market with two new systems - they're trying to finally break into that 18-35 year old market that portables have never nailed before. Sure, the GBA SP is sleek and cool, but the games, for the most part, are dinky, 2d, kid-focused titles, and sales for older gamers certainly aren't in the same realm as consoles.
This guy's analysis assumes that the target consumer already owns a GBA or an SP. His assumption is WRONG. There are a lot of older gamers who don't see a need for a portable system, particularly the CASUAL adult gamer; the one who buys Madden and GTA and rents a few other games. Both companies are going for the wow factor to nail the older audience into thinking they need a portable system. The PSP has the edge in the "cool" factor, thanks to Gran Turismo, MGS:Acid, etc, but the DS has the battery life and price point that PSP desperately needs to convert its "cool" factor into pure sales. And Metroid Prime: Hunters might be just enough to get older gamers to pay attention and give a crap during launch. Furthermore, Nintendo has already announced an expected shortage this X-mas season. That is terribly intentional - the buzz of the "hard to get, super-awesome toy of the season" will put the DS in the lead with both sales AND reputation well before anyone even holds a PSP in the states.
That article was horrible. Almost all of the complaints (at least DS-oriented) were based on very small factual evidence! I can only conclude that the arguments against the PSP are similar.
I really enjoyed how the writer concluded that the DS was just a retro-device, pumping out remake after remake. Only two games have been scheduled for re-release on the DS, and both of the games were HUGE sellers in the past. Among the sizable list of expected releases, it's hard to believe that this system is simply a portable N64.
As far as portable gaming is concerned, the DS might not necessarily be "innovative," since the capabilities have existed on non-portable devices for quite some time. But conglomerating all of these utilities into one gaming device does make it a very marketable platform.
As far as release date is concerned, I believe it is appropriate. The competition (in either perspective) is releasing a new system around the same time. American buying power has been stronger in the past, but it is hardly weak. And a release around the holiday season is sure to help sales.
The backing from the developers alone has me sold on the DS. I have yet to hear the same claims from PSP developers.
The SP doesn't have the 18-35 market? "Dinky 2D kid-focused"? I've seen numbers that say anywhere from one third to one half of SP owners are in that range from Nintendo themself or market research companies.
I'm curious as to whether anyone agrees with this guy. I found some of his points valid, but as I read through it I found his convictions lacking. Especially when he said that Nintendo never used to put out a new handheld every couple of years. 1989 - Gameboy 1996 - Gameboy Pocket 1998 - Gameboy Colour 2001 - Gameboy Advance 2003 - Gameboy SP 2004 - Nintendo DS It seems that Nintendo tends to upgrade their handhelds a couple of years after their initial release (except for the gameboy to the gameboy Pocket). It's actually been three years between the GBA and the DS, which isn't necessarily a huge rush seeing as Nintendo isn't planning on discontinuing the line.
Furthermore, the quality of Sony's disc-reading products (and products in general) are horrible--partially due to the fact that Sony made a shift from Japanese factories in the 90s to factories in Malayasia (while still retaining the high price tag). MD/CD Walkmans, PlayStation 2s, PlayStations break really easily, and frankly I don't trust the PSP at all to be any different.
The DS though, this guy's way off. Remakes? The touch screen LCD presents interesting opportunities for games, which will take time for developers to get used to. Granted, the first bunch of titles will make very little innovative use of the second screen (maps, status screens, etc), but there's a lot of untapped potential from a design perspective.
The GBA SP sells more than the PS2 in Japan and shows that people aren't getting weary of "new" handhelds--on the contrary it shows that unlike regular consoles (PS2, Xbox, GC) the handheld market doesn't seem to be plateauing into market saturation (as it seems to already have for home consoles, hence the launch of Xbox 2 in late 2005). Nokia has failed because the hardware itself isn't appealing, both aesthetically (QD included) and technically.
Comparisons to the Sega Dreamcast are horrible, because Nintendo is in a very different position than Sega years back. For one, Sega was already doing poorly in Japan with its Megadrive sales (though the Sega Genesis was successful stateside), and the Dreamcast suffered in terms of both consumer and developer support when launched. It's failure in Japan ultimately was the biggest blow to the fate of the console and ultimately the fate of the whole company, despite the Dreamcast being a good system.
Nintendo DS on the other hand, comes off the good reputation it has as a handheld console platform. Nintendo's not shortchanging marketing for this console's launch to, as it has pumped more money preparing its launch than any other previous system. Reception in Japan has been generally warm, as well as from journalists.
Maybe Nunavut thinks there's too many handhelds coming out too soon, but the consumer market won't.
He's just your average retarded slashbot talking out his ass sounding like he knows what he's on about.
I would venture to guess that remakes are important to Nintendo because those are the games that sell like blazes. The Super Mario remakes all sold like crazy when they game out for the GBA. I own a GBA expressly because there are many remakes of the good old games I used to play. I own a single game for the system that isn't a sequel or direct remake (Golden Sun 1). I will more than likely skip buying a GBA SP to replace my original GBA in order to get a DS because Nintendo is remaking more good old games for it.
You may not like it, but money talks a lot louder than the grumbling
Is there a problem with providing a bit more power than what is intended to be used so that in the few cases where a game would normally struggle (too many enemies on screen, etc) it will instead temporarily go over it's power "limit" to continue without faultering? (Yet still averaging out to be within the power usage limit)
I personally see no problem with a limitation of not using 100% power 100% of the time, in fact I commend Sony on taking the leap if this is indeed their reasoning.
The fact remains that Sony has made no announcements as to the exact limitations, which could easily mean the limitations will only be a limitation if trying to use the UMD or WiFi along side high CPU usage.
Sony has also made no announcements as to the battery life of the PSP, so the bickering is pointless. I think it's quite reasonable to assume the PSP will at least have the battery life to last both to and from work on a decent size commute for the average Tokyo businessman, which they previously have alluded to as their primary market for the PSP.
But as I already said, the bickering is pointless, and it's not like I can prove any conjectures I've made. All I can say for sure is that I hope I end up developing on the PSP, as it looks to be one nice machine to work on.
Shoot Pixels, Not People!
But have you seen the Metal Gear Acid Trailers? That thing looks somewhere in between the graphics capabilities of the PS1 and PS2. Just look at the size of the new PS2, it's clear that Sony can fit that technology into a handheld. Sorry, but I think the market is ready for a PS2 you can play on the subway.
Great, I've been looking for a portable version of this game!
:(
Oh, wait - that wasn't what you meant.
"There are people who do not love their fellow human being, and I _hate_ people like that!" - Tom Lehrer
Yeah, but the way these things tend to work, when a new system comes out, developers generally have to work their way through a few games before they can really push a system to its limits, as they learn its strengths and weaknesses, and master its capabilities. So to some degree, the first round of games is already handicapped in regards to its ability to exploit the hardware. And now Sony is asking developers to intentionally go even easier on it?
With laptops and whatnot, different power levels to the cpu makes a lot of sense, because most of what is done on a computer is easy stuff like email or word processing. Games have always been one area that faithfully pushes whatever hardware is available to the limit. I wouldn't think many developers would appreciate being told to hold back.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
Evidently, I haven't been keeping up, so feel free to correct me if I'm wrong (oh yeah, this is Slashdot, so I don't have to ask for that, do I?)
The P2P uses different media (not DVDs) for its games, so while it is code-compatible, it is not media compatible, so if I buy it, I have to buy all new games for it, even though I have a shelf full of PS2 games.
I was under the impression that the DS was 100% compatible with GB/GBA/SP games. I learned reading this that it doesn't support multi-player or GameCube interaction. Even so, if I buy a DS, I can play anything from original GB Tetris to the latest SP releases? Even with just single player, that's good enough for me.
-- stream of did I lock the front door consciousness