EA Pushes Sony on PSP, Price Cuts Possible

GameDaily reports that EA has been pushing Sony to be more proactive with the PSP. The software giant feels that Sony is 'letting the DS win' by failing to adopt an aggressive strategy for the handheld console. The article mentions a piece run on CNN's Game Over column, where Chris Morris talks about the possibility of a price cut by the end of the year. From the EA article: "'There is a price cut coming in the second half of the year,' said P.J.McNealy of American Technology Research. '[The PSP] has lost momentum. Nintendo has had a great run since it launched the DS Lite and Sony needs to regain some ground.' In the meantime, though, EA has been thoroughly encouraged by the DS and DS Lite and conversely discouraged by the PSP, to the point where the publisher is apparently reconsidering its strategy in the portable market."

Comments

Where are the games?

[MBCook]

I basically regret my PSP purchase. I've played a handful of games. The last game I played that I really enjoyed was Hot Shots Golf: Open Tee which was released a little over a year ago. Me and My Katamari was kind of fun, as were a few of the early games, but by and large I don't feel like I've gotten much in the way of games. What's coming up? Not much. The only two games I am looking forward to are MGS: Portable Ops and Gitaroo Man Lives! (which is supposed to be part re-release/port).

Compare that to my DS. Two or three Castlevania games. Mario Kart. Mario and Luigi: Partners in Time. Kirby. Yoshi's Touch and Go. Wario Ware. Phoenix Wright and Trauma Center. That's what I can think of off the top of my head. Then there is the upcoming Yoshi's Island sequel, the next Phoenix Wright, Mario vs. Donkey Kong, Elite Beat Agents, Kirby Squak Squad, another Castlevania, Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass, and I'm sure more.

I feel my DS has been a great purchase and I've gotten tons of play time out of it. I've barely touched my PSP in the last year and I regret it's purchase.

Sony has delivered tons of games on their last two platforms. The PSP is just sitting there. Not many games so far. Not many coming. The seeming killer feature that is to come is old PS1 games.

Re:Where are the games?

[Wind_Walker]

Sony is making the same mistake on the PS3 as they are on the PSP. Too much focus on the "extras" and too little focus on the games. On the PSP it was UMD movies (which are about to go the way of Betamax) while the PS3 has it's Blu-Ray. PS3 launch games are sorely lacking, while we just had a Slashdot article detailing the 25+ launch games for the Wii.

It's interesting to note the similarities between Nintendo and Sony with respects to their consoles. NES was good and had lots of good games. SNES was king of consoles, with thousands of AAA titles and lots of third party support. Then Nintendo rode their hubris and put out the N64, and drove away their supporters to the sleeker PS1 and Dreamcast. Nintendo has been playing catch-up ever since - though the Wii has the potential to revolutionize the industry, much in the same way the NES did so many years ago.

For Sony, PS1 was good with a lot of exclusives, and PS2 was king for a lot of the same reasons as the SNES. But Sony has displayed so much hubris in the buildup to the PS3 launch that sometimes I wonder if I've slipped into a Greek morality play. "The PS3 is actually pretty cheap", "We'd sell 6 million consoles even without games", "$599 US dollars", "Giant enemy crabs"... Sony is ripe for a fall.

DS would make for a great "Sport manager" title

[RyoShin]

I don't know if there are any football games out for the DS already, but I've always thought that the touch screen would be a great way to do sports like football.

On the top screen you would see a normal 3D set-up of the football field with the two teams ready for the hike. The game would pause, and you'd have X seconds (or maybe unlimited time) to use the touch pad to draw out a game plan (as if you were drawing on a chalk board planning plays). You would have defaults and could save custom plays for quick recall, as well.

Once the ball is snapped, you would have the option of "getting dirty" and assuming the role of one of the players while the other players act out your strategy, or you could just let the AI handle it all.

strategy?

[MrSquirrel]

"by failing to adopt an aggressive strategy" Sony has let Nintendo win the portable market? Or maybe it's the fact that the DS is an exciting new concept that is geared towards fun, while the PSP is just a rehash of the PS2 in portable form. Aggressive?! Sony HAS been aggressive -- PSP commercials and ads everywhere! I don't think I've seen any DS commercials on television, and the ads I've seen have all been online ones at gaming sites.

Any business major can tell them that success is dependent on the 5 P's -- product, price, place, promotion, people. PSP is same-old-same-old as any other handheld, Nintendo's product is innovative and has 2 screens, one of which is stylus-oriented. Talk about fun! Price -- the DS is quite a bit cheaper than the PSP. Promotion -- PSP beats the DS here from what I've seen. Place -- they're both pretty available... except newegg has been sold out of the DS since it came out! People -- the Nintendo people seem a little slow to jump on the latest graphics and such, instead orienting around fun... sometimes a little too kiddie-fun... but the DS is an example of fun triumphing over "omg megahertz!!!". The Sony people are bastards who put rootkits on music CD's and tout that people will buy their products even if there are no games for them.

Re:strategy?

[MrSquirrel]

I'm not sure how popular they were in other places, I was just speaking from my experience: I usually only watch Adult Swim + Discovery Channel + History Channel, and those damn PSP ads were all over those stations (the ones with the mice, and the dust-bunnies, and the squirrels... they almost ruined squirrels for me!!!... those bastards).

Aside from the GTA: Liberty City Stories commercials, I never once saw a commercial for a PSP game... or even the features the PSP had... only "it's like cheddar you can play with outside" sub-culture references offensive to squirrels and humans.

Sony Dropped the Ball

[J. T. MacLeod]

The PSP, while expensive, was absolutely an incredible system. Too bad Sony didn't care to use it.

Games? Most games suffer from the "portable" curse of generally being very bad products, but that's the developers' fault. A poor analog "nub" aside, this can partly be blamed on third parties, but Sony certainly didn't take any initiative here.

Video? UMD movies failed, of course. But for our own videos we have to deal with low-resolution files that can't be produced by a standard encoder because it uses non-standard headers, and then there's the weird naming scheme that's required. And there's no purpose behind these aggravations except to prevent consumers from using the system's abilities to its fullest extent. Aggravating your customers and preventing them from using your product doesn't win you any fans.

Music? It sounds very nice, but the interface is no better than the cheapest of MP3 players. It doesn't manage your music, but it doesn't allow directories deeper than one level, so you can't organize your music, either. A decent music player interface is *not hard*. They just didn't care.

Network features? How long did it take for a decent web browser? RSS feeds? RSS feeds *that allow you to save anything*? Having these is GREAT, but the fact that it took so long to get them shows us the issues Sony has. But how many games actually have decent online play? 90% of games that only support local play should be able to be played online.

Sony made some great hardware crippled by idiotic management. I feel insulted as a customer. Some where in Sony, there is some one with a lot of vision whose great leaps are constantly struck down by some moron. Find the moron and fire him, and Sony will be OK.

The same thing happened with the PS2. Great hardware crippled by a few moronic decisions (the almost-but-not-quite enough video memory and the absolute failure to make use of network or multimedia features spring to mind). Why should I believe the PS3 will be any different?

Ouch.

[D14BL0]

That's bad when even EA says you suck at what you're doing.

Not completely correct

[Brianech]

This original version of this story is about a week old, and the article fails to mention that Sony just publicly denied that a price cut would occur in the near future (URL:http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php ?aid=18944). While I think a price cut would help out a lot, its almost as if Sony could care less about recovering their market share, and almost seem to be just moving on to the PS3. While I bash the PSP as much as anyone else, I do have one, and it is nice for media. Also the recent DevHook with 2.71 firmware emulation is pretty cool (keeping homebrew capabilities while gaining access to the web browser, RSS, and all that fun stuff).

The DS has to come up, doesn't it?

[CharAznable]

Seems like every discussion about the PSP has to turn into a "I love my DS" thread. And rightly so, so I'll say it: I love my DS. It has me spending on games like they're ale and whores, and I just can't get enough of it. I brought it to work one day and the next day 3 coworkers got one each. The thing is just fun and contagious, which is exactly what a console is supposed to be. The price is there, the games are there, the people to play with are there... Nintendo have a bona fide hit on their hands, while Sony pays the price for their arrogance. The fact that any thread about Sony ends up being about how awesome Nintendo is just drives the point home.

Re:Oh for the love of

[trdrstv]

"The DS has sold (not shipped) 21 million units worldwide."

Also you state the PSP has more games, but that doesn't paint the whole picture. The PSP currently has only 3 titles that sold over 1 million copies worldwide and the DS has 13. One of which (English Training) isn't even a game, so it wouldn't show up on Metacritic.

The PSP had UMD movies that were lower resolution copies of Movies that were not playable on anything else; cost more then a DVD of the same movie, and usually had fewer extras due to lower disk capacity. The DS has a wider variety of games, and other Software that appeal to broader demographics.