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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.'"
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.
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-
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.