PSP To Refocus on Teen Market

Wired's Game|Life blog, and writer Chris Kohler, have the news that the PSP will be aiming at teen users in the near future. This from PSP senior product manager John Koller, who connected the recent system price cut to this new initiative. "Going forward, Sony will unveil the 'Dude, Get Your Own' campaign. The idea this year, says Koller, is to 'break out of the home cycle.' A significant amount of PSP users in that 13-17 group play the device at home. 'The teens that are doing this value the ability to utilize the portability,' Koller notes paradoxically. By portability, he clarifies, he means 'I can play it upstairs while my parents are watching the TV downstairs.'"

Comments

"Paradox" regarding the "Games You Play"

[MS-06FZ]

(And a great big cookie to anybody who gets the reference in the subject line!)

The "paradox" is that people are playing the portable system at home. It's not really a paradox, it just means that the ability to take a portable system elsewhere is not the only good reason to use a portable. I think this is significant (if you accept the idea - and I do) because the PSP is a bit large for a portable system - but also very powerful for a portable. If you look at it as a machine you're gonna take places, it may seem unwieldy - but if you look at it as a machine you'll use at home, it's convenient and the feature set is not too shabby....

From their new ads it's underway.

[kinglink]

What say teenager other than a good dick joke (link to blog that contains video and then links to video:http://kotaku.com/gaming/psp/clip-and-the-ps p-pedo-teen-ads-start-249812.php)

Seriously Sony can't find a market for this piece of hardware, Sony didn't drop the price retailers DEMANDED sony drop the price because they had given so much store space for it and they weren't even able to make a profit on it. Otherwise you wouldn't see that many PSPs anywhere.

Sony doesn't have the games the fans want, doesn't allow the functionality the fans want, and charges more than the DS. The question Sony needs to ask themselves is the following what part of that sentence means the PSP is a good idea? I stated when the PSP first came out it needed unique games. All I saw then was PS2 ports. Now a couple years later I own one (great MP3 player, homebrew system, and I got it at a steal) but now I ask the same question. Lumines can only go so far. The owners of the system can't even find the unique games because all the get are 100 ports and 1 unique game. There's good games out there, but Sony isn't giving the unique games a shot.

Now reread that last paragraph, change DS to Wii, Ps2 to 360, and Lumines to Resistance. Oh and then change it to the fact I don't own one. It's the same story, the PS3 can't find an audience because it's just a "me too" situation. They don't have any worthy exclusives for at least 6 monthes. Their current games are moderate (Motorstorm and resistance didn't impress much at the game studio I work) Ps3 home can only go so far(especially when unlike the 360, it's only for when your not playing games. On the 360 when you're playing the games you still get voice chat, friends and more while playing your chosen game)

Sony needs a new direction. And sadly it's too late this generation, the die has been cast, they crossed the Rubicon. They didn't provide the fans with what the fans wanted. They didn't provide the developers with what developers wanted. They provided sony with what sony wanted. Anyone telling you they are supporting their developers is a first party studio or getting paid (through assistance or money). A lot of studios were thinking it but Eidos gave it voice last month, and you'll see more and more developers giving secondary support to the ps3 versions of games.

Re:What's wrong?

[MeanderingMind]

Tough to say.

Firstly, the PSP is fighting against decades of nostalgia. Despite the rise and fall in their console market share, Nintendo has been the undisputed champion of hand helds. They've defeated Atari, Sega (who even made a handheld Sega Genesis of all things), and anyone else who happened to try to muscle in. Simply put, if you played a dedicated portable game system in the past 20 years it probably was either Nintendo or one of those crappy $5 battery eaters.

Secondly, Lumines was great. That doesn't sound like it was bad for the PSP, but it was all the PSP really had going for it at first (at least in terms of games). People who bought it for games had to wait a long time for the now oft cited excellent titles to appear on the system. That slump both gave Nintendo the chance to prove the DS had what it took, and took away what had otherwise been excellent momentum from the PSP.

Thirdly, load times. The PSP is, to my knowledge, the first handheld that sports the oft maligned loading bar. I remember this being the most common complaint about the portable a year or two back. It takes the DS all of 2 seconds to boot up, and as few as 5 to get from there to playing the game. The worst I've ever seen was 15 seconds from "flip to frag". However, the PSP reportedly could take in excess of a full minute to load a game.

Fourthly, news. We don't hear much about the PSP in the news outside of how homebrewers have again bypassed the latest firmware update, or how the DS is outselling it 2 to 1. We don't hear about how a game sold incredibly well, only about how everyone loves New Super Mario Bros. or Nintendogs. We learned about the death of UMD, while at the same time learning about how Nintendo was broadening and expanding the market. While the games problem is at this point rectified, there isn't much good news to be heard.

Fifthly, the PS3. While it may not be fair, a number of people have turned against Sony for what they see as an outrageous insult to their intelligence and pride. Should the PS3 be viewed as such? Not really, but for some it is. That also translates into anger against anything Sony, which includes the PSP. Guilty by association I fear.

Lastly, Sony PR. All of the above are conquerable and defeatible obstacles, except Sony's PR is terrible. We might have figured it out back with the borderline racist squirrels, or the ill-conceived graffiti campaign. They might have noticed when their PS3 ads and marketing were similarly ill-received. However, the bottom line is that if Sony had made the Wii or the DS, even with the same line-up of games and Shigeru Miyamoto behind them, Sony's PR would block the pathway to success like a giant, immovable boulder. They more than anything else are in a position to solve the issues the PSP faces because they are mostly issues of image, but they have also proven themselves to be absolutely incopetant at their job. They're even bad at finding other people to do their job for them (again, see the graffiti and that "grass roots" website campaign). In short, Sony's ball and chain is their PR, and until they stop dragging that dead weight behind them they'll never be able to catch Nintendo.

I'd rather like that all to change. It'd be nice if the systems could be weighed purely on their merits and achievements rather than by the stupid things their PR departments do.