Slashdot Mirror
PSP Devs Should Pony Up
President of development house 'Ready at Dawn' Didier Malenfant has given a short interview to GamesIndustry.biz. In the piece, he lays out his feeling that developers are to blame for the lackluster title library of Sony's handheld console. From the article: "'Everything is compromised, and it bugs the hell out of me when you hear a lot of developers saying, Well, we can't do this that way because it's a handheld game, or We can't do this because it doesn't have a second analog stick.' 'Those are all excuses,' Malenfant continued - observing that the original PSone controller didn't have any analog sticks, 'And there were great games on that.'"
I know that the chicken & egg argument could be applied here but it seems that the market for the PSP is a LOT smaller than the market for the foriginal Playstation.
Plus gamers are used to completely different games and gaming experiences, I'd suspect that most people who have a PSP expect the gameplay to be similar to what they have today on the PS2.
Looking at some games that have released in Europe (and not in the US) such as "Tales of Eternia" (which is a PSX port of "Tales of Destiny II" US) and "Breath of Fire III", there is the ability to bring games to the PSP without the long loading times - even ports of PSX games.
Contrast this with games like "Ys'" and the Japanese release on the PSP of Valkyrie Profile, both of which suffer from frequent load times. The latter also appears to have bad text and graphics, where the developer didn't take the time to remake the graphics and font for the smaller system, but just stretched out the graphics and added fuzziness to hide the edges.
Yuck.
In the latter case, it appears to just be laziness - they didn't take the time to make the game well, and now they and gamers will suffer for it.
On the other hand, I believe there are also some inherent design flaws with the PSP, mainly in the UMD system. Games that require data swap outs (like RPGs as you move from one area to the next) will suffer from load times. On a PSX system, that's fine - the CD is always spinning, because you're plugged into the wall.
On a PSP, though a constantly spinning UMD means your battery is going to vanish faster than a bottle of Bawls at a LAN party. So the game has to load, spin down, spin up, load, spin down over and over again, which gives you bad load times.
There are ways around this - better caching or compression, using a piece of the memory card (basically, you make the "save game" space at the beginning then use that to cache some data. Granted, it's not optimal, but it's an idea).
So a wagging finger of shame to developers too lazy to update the graphics in their ports, a wagging finger of shame to the developers who haven't even bothered to give us really good original games (save for maybe "Exit" - and no, I'm not including "Lumines" - it's Dr. Mario all over again), and a wagging finger to Sony for not promising on the possibility of the PSP.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
'Everything is compromised, and it bugs the hell out of me when you hear a lot of developers saying, Well, we can't do this that way because it's a handheld game, or We can't do this because it doesn't have a second analog stick.' 'Those are all excuses,' Malenfant continued - observing that the original PSone controller didn't have any analog sticks, 'And there were great games on that.
This guy understands what's going on.
The Gameboy Advance (SP) has one directional pad, two regular buttons, and two shoulder buttons. Yet, we get brilliant software for it, and it's only sold, what, a few dozen million systems?
The DS, ignoring the touch screen, only boasts an extra two buttons. Though I guess the industry has proven that you really can't do anything with those things, huh, guys?
I think it's more that the developers that are trying to utilize the power that the PSP possesses are too used to having all sorts of controls and control combos associated with it. It would be as if Amazon decided to boot its store and just make a book review site. Sure, they could do it, but they couldn't make just a book review site- eventually they'd turn it right back into the Amazon store, because they don't have any constraints, and are used to the bigger feel.
But you don't need a large amount of controls to have a good game. I've been playing Wario Ware, Inc. for a few weeks now, and at any time it is using one of the regular buttons and the d-pad at most during gameplay. And it's quite a fun game.
Another part of the problem is that too many developers may be trying to continue the "PSP is just a system to port to" thought process that seems to abound (I've seen few original games that aren't ports or rehashes). When going from a Splinter Cell game on the PS2 to the PSP, of course you're going to lose something because of the new layout. So, make a new stealth game. One that isn't Splinter Cell (yes, I know that's hard, bear with me a minute) and fashion it such that it works with the controls.
I am a Nintendo fanboi .. so I thought I'd get that out of the way. That doesn't, however, preclude me from making observations.
... "Oh ... stupid UMD movies"
.. all Nintendo machines, all with very good battery life.)
I was at Futureshop the other day, just checking out the GCN and DS titles and stuff, and walked by what I tought was a HUGE rack of PSP games. I thought, wow, WTF? I didn't know they had that many games. Then I looked a little closer
I don't think I ever saw any PSP games actually (not that I was looking for them or anything).
So here's the thing, if you don't blame the devs, who else can you blame for the poor showing of PSP games? Sony? Maybe. Perhaps if they weren't pre-occupied with trying to re-sell movies they've already sold to people in a more usuable form (aka DVDs) then they might perhaps be a little more focused on something that might actually sell the system. GAMES! From what I've obvserved, there are 3 kinds of people that have purchased the PSP. 1) The pissed off kind that thought they'd get some games. 2) The people who bought this solely for home brew purposes. 3) The pissed off people who conceded defeat and now only use it for home brew stuff.
There are a lot of nice things about the PSP (admittedly). The device itself is a quite sexy. The screen is pretty nice. My complaints would be that it's a little large, UMDs suck, Memory Sticks suck, analog stick isn't in a good position for long term play, battery life (it's not as bad as some people claim, but I expect a little more from a portable gaming machine. Just look at the past machines that sold well. Hmmm
Again, yes, I am a Nintendo whore, but these were just my observations/opinions.
AirSpeak - http://itunes.com/apps/AirSpeak
Sony needs to open up the development on the PSP.
1. Make development kits available.
2. Allow PSP's to run homebrew. Now I don't mean stolen ISOs or the like.
3. Start a community site so players can upload games.
3a. Offer the ability for a homebrew(r) to charge for their game ($1 here, $1 there).
3b. Sony can get a cut, profit for everyone!
-zariok-
That means `pay for` doesn't it? What should they be paying for? The article doesn't make this clear.
When you port any game to a system that cannot give you the exact same sort of input as the originating system, you will run into problems. If a game used 2 analog sticks originally, you cannot make the exact same game on a system with only one analog stick.
You can make a game that has a close resemblance, but thats about it.
Now, I think that one of the big reasons that the PSP may be suffering is that too many developers and publishers are porting games to that system rather then writing entirely new games. specifically for it.
The Nintendo DS does not suffer as much from this problem for two reasons. One is that most direct port type games from earlier systems have already shown up on the Gameboy Advance. The other reason is that the new interface pretty much demands new types of games.
END COMMUNICATION
are the AWFUL UMD load times! There is nothing more infuriating than the bloody load times in practically all the PSP games I have.
One of the reasons why I keep my PSP at 1.5 is to use UMD Emulator and Fastloader. Guess what? The PSP is MUCH MORE ENJOYABLE because loading off memory stick (or the hard drive accessory) is way faster. (Off memory stick, it's really quick. Hard drive is perhaps 2-4x slower, but UMD is probably 10x slower than the hard drive). Sony could make a killing if they made it possible to cache UMDs on memory sticks and have games load from there rather than the UMD itself.
Also, I do believe all the excuses are just that - excuses. Lack of buttons? Lack of analog sticks? Well, it means that one has to be a lot more intelligent in writing their games! Take Nintendo's Mario and Luigi: Partners in Time - you have 4 characters you have to control, each mapped to 1 button. That only leaves the shoulder buttons to do stuff with. It works, and is plenty fun for an RPG, and the trick to playing it is to realize that it's not what the buttons do, but combinations of characters and button pushing.
Lack of innovation is always going to be much more obvious on a handheld system which effectively offers nothing new beyond improved graphics capabilities and a shiny, and it must be said, rather lovely casing.
Yeah, it's got a nice screen, and whilst it's bigger than that of the Gameboy SP, and a more conventional format that that of the DS, it's too small to allow full console titles to be ported to it, so from a developers point of view, it's as much of a burden as an advantage. People are expecting better graphics and use of the screen real estate, but in the industry it's seen just another platform on which to release your games, and moving away from a conventional screen size is a real pain in the arse.
As I had been expecting from well before the PSP and DS were released, we're seeing some pretty innovative ideas using the dual screens, touch screen and microphone inputs on the Nintendo DS. These are all features which can be used to enhance gameplay, and bring a whole new experience to gamers, and they're even being used to enhancing more established genres. Developers love that kind of thing. New toys, bells and whistles to play with are always going to get the creative juices flowing, especially if using them is optional. You don't hear developers crying out with joy that they've come up with a groundbreaking game idea that uses the extra half inch of screen space available on the PSP.
The PSP just isn't groundbreaking at all. It certainly does what it does well enough, and as a piece of consumer electronics, it looks stunning, but underneath it all, it's just, well, a rather uninspiring, fairly boring handheld gaming machine.
I can easily see the same thing happening once all three next-gen consoles are on sale. Sony and Microsoft will be fighting each other purely on hardware performance and the odd exclusive title, but it'll all just be first person shooters, sports and driving games. There'll have to be some pretty sever price drops to ensure that they shift the number of units they have planned. The games will probably all look stunning, but will offer very little new.
Meanwhile, Nintendo will be happily shifting the Revolution, selling plenty of downloaded legacy titles, and showing the world truly innovative games. Having a full developer's kit priced at only $2K is going to bring many more developers to the party as well. I can't wait.
I have a lot of support.
No, no you don't.
Normally you need to have the dev kit, which is special version of the console without copy protection (allows burning games to regular media) and special debug features. I don't remember exactly off the top of my head, but I think dev kits are usually between $2,000 to $4,000 USD each a few years ago. If got you 10 people working directly on the dev kit, you got $20,000 to $40,000 USD invested before you even start.
Visual Studio C++ is probably the most common programming environment across the different platforms. The PS2 uses Linux and GCC that comes with the dev kit. You can easily spend a small fortune in development tools for programmers and artists before you even start.
You gotta to love the per-unit licensing fee. One-third of the selling price for each unit will go straight to the console makers. Most game publishers would love to have a runaway PC title since all of the money is going to straight to their bottom line. The only reason they put up with this highway robbery is that a good console game can make more money than a PC title because of the volume of units being sold.
Finally, your game still needs to be approved by the console maker before hitting the stores. No approval, no game. No game, no money. By the time you reach this stage, you might've sunk in at least $200,000 USD to develop a game that won't go anywhere if it doesn't get approval. As an independent game developer, if the money issues doesn't kill you in the beginning, it will kill you in the end if you don't get approval.
If you seen the movie "Grandma's Boy", where the lead QA tester is developing an XBox title at home, that's pure fantasy. When I was a lead tester at Atari, I only made $16/hour so I couldn't afford to make console games and I certainly didn't have the time to work on my own Quake 2 levels much less a console game. (Granted I was going to school part-time to learn programming to get out of the video game industry.) If he was using company's property and/or time to develop the game, he would be sued silly so many different ways. Unless you have a rich sugar daddy, stay way from the developing console games. I heard selling small Java games at $20 USD a pop off of a website is the way to go these days.
The DS has been selling pretty damn well compared to the PSP. Now, part of this is due to the fact that Nintendo has a very strong fanbase and I'm certain that a large part of it is also because the DS is much cheaper, but the main reason it's been selling so many units is because it has some great games. I know that's the reason I bought one. Last year during E3 I kept hearing about the new games on the way for the DS and I realized that I seriously needed to own one. Sure, none of the games out at the time were really that good, but the first wave of greatness was just about to drop.
That said, let's look at some of the top games for the DS and see why the PSP couldn't have done them as well (ignoring such things as licenses, we're concentrating on gameplay).
First up is Mario Kart DS... lots of people are pointing to this as one of the killer apps for the system and considering it introduced the wi-fi connection it was perfectly positioned. At it's core it's a racing game with an online component. The PSP would have no problems producing an excellent racing game along the same lines and also have the same wi-fi access built in. Yes, it sold largely due to the strength of the franchise, but every franchise has to start somewhere once people start innovating. No excuse here.
Next up is Advance Wars: Dual Strike. Turn-based strategy game that's the direct sequel to the same franchise on the GBA and which started earlier, but was only released in Japan. Considering it ran on the GBA there's no reason the PSP can't have something like this. It uses simple graphics, but that's part of the charm. The deep and involving gameplay is the reason people have become hooked on the series. If it was a PSP title it probably would have had online multiplayer as well, but Nintendo launched it before the WFC. Again, no excuses.
Next up is Nintendogs. Ok, it's not one I personally own (unlike the previous two titles) and it doesn't really appeal to me, but it does appeal to a lot of people out there. Admittedly it relies pretty heavily on the unique features (touch input, microphone) of the DS so it's not really an option on the PSP. I'm also willing to bet that they wouldn't want to try it even if it was possible because it would make the PSP look less "hardcore". Still... they have a valid excuse for not making a game of this type.
Our next title is Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time. Again, sequel to a GBA game, but with features that take specific advantage of the DS (4 buttons, two screens). The fact that it's a sequel of a GBA game means it's still possible on the PSP, it would just be a tad different. As it is it's a unique twist on the traditional Japanese-style CRPG. Again, no reason why the PSP can't do it.
Moving right along and we have Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow. Ignoring the nicety of having a second screen for status and map info the only thing that makes it DS-specific is the seal system. Most people agreed that the game would have been better without it. Would the pretty graphics of the PSP have been cool if we had the same gameplay though? Certainly.
Kirby: Canvas Curse is our next game and one that makes specific use of the touch screen. It's a creative and interesting way to use the technology and that means that the PSP couldn't have done it. Sometimes that's just how things are and you can't blame PSP devs for not trying it.
Meteos. Well, it's a puzzle game by the same guy who did Lumines. Sure it uses the touch-screen in a pretty important way (the game is too fast to really play with the gamepad), but the point is that the PSP can and has made a puzzle game of a reasonably similar nature. Even more it's one of the top titles for the PSP. Way to go.
Moving into upcoming games we have the hotly-anticipated Metroid Prime: Hunters. From the First Hunt demo it's pretty apparent how useful the touch screen is to replicate using a mouse, but first-person shooters have come out for the PSP so it's entirely possible to do it. I have to say I'd think there woul
It'd be nice to see some less used franchises, such as Jet Set Radio or one of the old Oddworld titles, I think both would be fantastic on the PSP, but maybe that's just me.
I'm just kinda fed up of all these popular, well-whored franchises. I don't *want* another Metal Gear title, or another Gran Turismo!
Modern dev kits are NOT 2k - 4k(execpting the revolution at 2k) the PS2 dev kit costs 20K, a xbox(not 360) dev kit costs 10k, a psp dev kit runs 25k as does a GCN kit.
The game loading for 7 minutes or me watching a video of a game load for seven minutes.
Ooo man the floppy drive is broken. No wait. The computer is just upside down.
Maybe the prices I quoted was for the test boxes that I used in the QA department. Still, you're in the hole long before you even start programming.
So, why is it that GTA has done so poorly on/for the PSP?
I'm sure you've seen the WWE video on this topic..
h ell-psp-game-takes-its-sweet-time/
http://www.joystiq.com/2006/02/24/load-time-from-
....and that turned out to be a load of crap. The devs, game players, media, etc. were all duped by the hype. I think Sony themselves bought into it too, thinking the PSP would usher in a new UMD age in the same way that they THOUGHT the PS2 brought about the DVD age. (Hint, you geniuses at Sony: The PS2 brought the collective baseline price of all DVD players down, which brought about the DVD age....the PS2 itself didn't popularize the format. The PSP has been the only UMD-enabled device on the face of the earth for over a year now, and it's still prohibitively expensive.)
The PSP is nowhere near a portable PS2, but all the devs are still acting as if that's what it is. That's why your games aren't selling. It all went to hell when Sony claimed porta-PS2 power. What beautiful 10-gauge footshot that was.
To cut a long rant off before it gets longer, I'll say this: If Sony had gone with a less complex, cheaper hardware design with a more wisely designed media format, AND had marketed the PSP as a system capable of playing GBA-style and PSone-style games at near-PS2 level graphics on a nice big screen with no disc load times, instead of a flat-out portable PS2 and ultimo-PMP-deluxo, right now they would have developers that aren't scratching their heads, and that (coupled with the lower prices) would have led to better sales. Way to ignore over 16 years of what's already been proven to work, chumps. (You ain't faring too well against Apple, either, and YOU'RE the old man of the portable audio industry, not them. Shape up already, you're a mess!)
The only thing about GPH's GP2X handheld system that doesn't fit your description is that it isn't available at brick-and-mortar retail chains in North America.
What should they be paying for?
Producers who care.
Xbox kits (green ones) are _way_ cheaper than that, or at least have been for the last couple years. I'm not sure about PS2 as we haven't bought any in ages, but PSP kits are also a lot less than your figure. If you want to show some proof, fine, but I'm not going to bother if you won't.
One of the main problems with the PSP is that compared to the DS, it really isn't that appealing. Graphics aren't something you look for from your handheld. The only serious thing the PSP has over the DS is the analog stick - and I believe that the DS truly needs one. There is the screen, but it's too easy to loose the thumb thingie. From a consumeristic point of view, the PSP isn't attractive to anyone but the kind of people that stand next to the "beautiful people" on the beach for a few minutes playing Wipeout and GTA, then move onto the next crowd when they loose interest. It's not really a gamers console, despite it having more released for it than the DS. It's a fashion accessory, and dare I say, a gimmick?
EpiAdv - if you like Pokey the Penguin, try this comic!
The simple fact of the matter is that gameplay on a handheld is inherently different from gameplay on a home console. This is a known fact, has been known for years, as the gameboy has outlasted every other handheld that has entered the market. The main reason being, the other handhelds were structured just as portable home consoles, and therefore they ignored several important issues involving battery life, short learning curve and gameplay that's easy to get into and out of quickly.
People are calling PSP the King of Ports because that's all that's being made, console ports you can carry with you. And, unfortunately, that just doesn't sell a portable system, because while the system is portable, the game is not. Most of these companies have development groups within them that have worked on GBC & GBA and produced hits, some have even produced hits on the DS. If those same teams were working on the PSP, instead of teams who've only really worked with the PS2, and maybe the Xbox or GCN, you'd see better, more interesting PSP games.
But with things being the way they are, it's very unlikely. It seems as if the PSP is going to suffer the same fate the GCN suffered. It's not selling well compared to it's competition, and so it will lose developer support, meaning even fewer people will purchase it.
just some guy
While there was and is a lot of "shovelware" to sum that up as all playstation had is fucking retarded.
[20:36] wwwdot/.dotorg
The AC does make an interesting point though. At the moment alot of the development that is going on tends to ask the question "How do we port this?". Which is understandable given the infancy of the system. Don't forget that it took a while for the PS2 to get rolling development wise. However once devs got more experienced with the 'uniqueness' of the architecture some excelent things were done, and are still being done. Give it time and we will see this system used it great ways, for example load times are getting faster as devs work out how to lay out the data on disk to decrease random access, this also has the benefit of added batery life, eventually they will get a grip on the other bits. Patience.
"Infancy" is NOT "A year after release." That's High School. The PSP should be learning to drive and having illegal sex already. Okay, yes, I know there's a GTA title out for it, but that totally breaks my analogy.
The problem is, that unlike the DS, from a developers point of view, the PSP doesn't really have any "uniqueness" at all. It's the same thing as we had before, just smaller, faster and in a nicer box, which is why all we're seeing is the same old games over and over.
The gaming world is getting pretty tired of that sort of thing, and is crying out for innovation. The PSP is very much a fashion accessory, and simply another platform to port your games to, not a new platform which is going to encourage innovation.
When it came out, everyone went "Wooh, that thing looks amazing, the screen's brilliant!", but then they took a look at the games, and saw the often absurd loading times and decided not to bother buying one until there was something special released. So far, it hasn't happened, and I can't really see it happening either.
I can tell you the reasons I didn't buy it, after looking forward to it a lot:
* I already know Liberty City. The excitement of discovering a new city is half the point.
* Reviews agreed that the missions were bland. Yuck.
* The graphics are not appealing, even considering the limitations of the PSP.
Sub-standard warmed-over original GTA3? No thank you, I've got nicer things to do.
Luckily, Take Two are trying a second time. Here's to hoping!
Here is the contrast of design 2 choices made for the DS and PSP:
1.Controller
PSP:Slim down what people are now used to(i.e. no analog stick)
DS:Innovate by adding a touchscreen
2.Media
PSP:Spinning UMD discs, cause high loading time
DS:Solid state cartridges, fast loading and highly durable
Basically Sony did not think things through and did not used sensible moderation. They thought if they made it look cooler with a much nicer screen and better graphics than the competitor, everybody would want one. I think the only thing that has been keeping the PSP afloat is its music and video capabilities, but is it really competing in the handheld gaming market anymore?
Better graphics and optimised loading times mean more developers working for more time on the game. If publishers feel the game will sell X more units at retail because of the extra polish, they'll pay for it but usually it doesn't make a difference - especially now when PSP titles are thin on the ground. The system itself doesn't help this because, paradoxically, it's powerful enough that you need a larger, more expensive team to make a competitive game on PSP. Look at Wipeout Pure - 10 programmers and 13 artists.
If Sony make the business side easier you'll see more games and there'll be more competitive pressure to deal with loading times, to do ports properly, to make more original games and to build up a technology base to make it easier to make games on the system. Right now the lacklustre market is just dragging all of these issues.
Graham
You obviously dont know what your talking about if you think -every- single person working on the game needs a development kit. If you have one hundred people working on a game, are you going to need 100 dev kits? No, usually you only need a few, and people work on normal computers and load the data on the dev kit when they need too.
The whiner's name is "Malenfant". It's french for "bad child".
another point is that you can't even buy a devkit until the console manufacturer has approved your game design (unless you're EA or a company of that size).
How detailed does a developer's first console game design have to be before a console maker will approve the developer and the game? Does it have to be a 90 percent complete PC game (for PS2, Game Boy Advance, Xbox, GameCube, PSP, Xbox 360) or Tablet PC game (for Nintendo DS) which shall be ported to the target system? And does the developer have to have already sold one or more profitable PC titles?
I don't know about the official PS2 Dev kit, but one of my housemates and myself purchased the PS2 linux development kit for something in the region of ~200GBP and it's great - sure you need a grounding in GNU/Linux (I've got some experience with GNUU/Linux so helped my housemate who while being an excellent programmer had been strictly Windows only). It's good enough for us to tinker with in our spare time and to make some (admittedly) primitive games.
There's mischief and malarkies but no queers or yids or darkies within this bastard's carnival, this vicious cabaret.
There are two conflicting issues:
1. PSP games are generally expected to sell at lower prices than PS2 games.
2. The PSP is more or less a PS2, so it's not substantially cheaper to develop a 3D PSP game as opposed to a 3D PS2 game.
On Game Boy, for example, developers can get away with games that are less tech heavy, games that don't require teams of modellers and texturers and animators. Not so on the PSP. A PSP game is essentially a PS2 game from the developer's point of view, shovelware puzzle games excepted.
Karem
When all is said and done, nothing changes...
Sadly, that's a bit of a 'how long is a piece of string?' question.
OK, "How long is the median piece of string expected by a manufacturer from a rookie development firm?"
It varies between manufacturers
OK, I'll fork it into three separate questions to address each element of the oligopoly:
I think alot of patents are alowing hte release of alot of great software an dhardware and it hurts our economy and the overall societies pschie.
Stephanie Sexton
Even so, I thought that the game had excellent graphics (indistinguishable from the PS2), the missions were generally quite involving, there was a hell of lot of content, it was extremely well produced and the game was well suited to the handheld. The only gripe I had were occasional camera control problems caused by the lack of a second analogue controller. Otherwise the game is a classic and a recommended title.
It's just too bad that other makers don't put as much effort into their ports as Rockstar did.
Since I have been working on the PSP for the past year, let me say that IMNSHO, porting from PS2 to PSP is going to get you at best mediocre games. The PSP is a fairly nice piece of hardware, but what works for the PSP isn't what works on the PS2.
On paper, the PSP can look equivelant to the PS2 in a bunch of catagories. But there are significant differences. The PSP has more memory, but that memory is slower to access. PSP as a scratchpad just like the PS2, but it is more like a manual L2 cache, because it is slower to access. THe PSP has a really awesome vector floating point unit, but it is a co-processor, not a sister processor like the VU0 on the PS2. The PSP is supposedly 333MHz, but in truth it only runs at 222MHz. And then there are the two that really hurt: there is no programable VU1 on the PSP, and the PSP doesn't have hit-under-miss.
Then there are some other bugaboos. The compilers for the PSP are not anywhere near as mature as the PS2 compilers (well duh). That hurts ports especially since you are cramming end of generation games onto a new peice of hardwear that is less capable, AND you have to do without some of the cool stuff a really mature compiler can do.
And then there is Sony trying to be "nice and helpful" with the PSP libraries and APIs. Sweet jeebus but Sony can do no right when it comes to software support. I wept with frustration when I found out the only way I could use the DMA controller to push memory around was in a _synchornous_ API call. Yeah, that sure as hell made the API simpler and easier to understand, but it also made it frigging pointless. Thanks Sony!
Okay, so I bitched for a while. But you turn around and look at what is there and you have a perfectly viable platform for making cool games. It just isn't a PS2! You port a PS2 game/engine and you get crap. You start out to make a game for the PSP and you'll get something cool. The problem is that most publishers see the PSP as a bonus platform to help bolster current gen sales. No one wants to through down the cash for a PSP sepcific title when they can simply demand studios make a PSP SKU for whatever game is in development. The studio isn't going to want to through their preciousl little money at reworking a title/engine for the PSP, so they'll patch it up, slap it on the butt ans send it out the door.
I did not intend my question to be rhetorical. But anyway, next question: If my question was in fact interpretable only rhetorically, then I cannot start my own firm. If I cannot start my a firm, then how do I get a job in the video game industry?