Slashdot Mirror
PSP To Increase U.S. Lead Over DS
Next Generation has a piece on an analyst's prediction that Sony's PSP will gain more ground on the Nintendo DS, here in the states, over the next five years. From the article: "SIG has compared year-by-year sales and estimates for the first five years of each machine's life, using sell-in and factory shipments. It points out that in its first year both PSP and DS managed around 13 million units each, with DS slightly ahead. Year two cumulative stats give PSP 25 million over DS' 22 million. In Year Three the difference rises to ten million (38m to 28m). In Year Four, PSP's lead has stretched to 15 million and to 20 million by Year Five." Though the PSP is now leading in the U.S., the DS is still king of the mountain in Japan.
The Sony PSP's games are long and tend to translate poorly for portable systems. They're usually story-centric and have a tendency to be broken up in the middle of the game.
Also, Sony doesn't know what direction to take it in. That's why it has features that are tangential to game-playing - playing videos, music, viewing images. Who cares? Those aren't games and using them shows that Sony isn't sure of its future. They want an alternate angle from which to market their device.
As has been noted, Sony's loading times are sad. Who wants load times on a portable device? You want to get up and go, and PLAY. Not wait, and wait, and wait.
The only thing the PSP has going for it is its beatiful design.
Then there's the DS. You look at its plethora of awesome games, mostly ports from older genres and titles and you realize that you're getting something you'll know will be good. You've played these games before - now they're portable. It's tremendous. And you get a touchscreen, thus enhancing your gameplay experience much as playing games on Palm-like devices has done in the past. The library of popular palm-style games is tremendous, and they're all GREAT! Just like the DS.
Also you have a microphone. What couldn't you do with that? You can blow puffs of air to inflate balloons and yell to get dates (Mario Kart and some Sega dating sim respectively). Who wouldn't feel a swell of pride blowing into an electronic device in a public setting or yelling at the top of their lungs? Clearly Nintendo knows what they're doing.
The GP didn't quote any numbers, he was merely pointing out that the numbers Sony most often quotes are the number of units shipped to retailers. I realize being a Sony fanboy is tough with the abomination that is the PSP, but you don't need to resort to petty trolling to cover up the fact that you have no counter-argument.
Maybe that's because when sony fanbois pull this argument, they wrap it around a nice helping of "yeah, becuz nintendo's for pokémon and mario kiddiez LOL"
So, in all fairness, stfu.