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The PSP - Sony's Missed Opportunity
C|Net passes on the words of Forrester analyst James McQuivey, who lambasts Sony for failing to live up to the opportunity the PSP presented. Though the handheld has certainly been doing better of late, it's hard not to point out that the PlayStation Portable's sales numbers flag in the face of the DS's incredible popularity. McQuivey also makes a point of stating how well the system could have done at taking a slice of Apple's death-grip on the downloadable media market. "'The thing is, Sony could have been all this,' McQuivey said. 'The Sony PSP is one of the best portable entertainment media devices that anyone has come up with in years. It has a relatively big screen, plays video beautifully, has good storage and audio. It could have been the first big mobile carrier for TV shows and movies.' Instead, the mobile-video play of one of the world's largest electronics companies is straggling behind Apple, has shaken the confidence of supporters--especially in Hollywood--and added to the woes of CEO Howard Stringer."
The PSP is a perfect example of a company cramming as many features into one product, marketing all these features, and then not following through. UMD failed because it was proprietary format that could only play on the PSP and most of the games that came out for the first year were ports of PS1 and PS2 games. As for a mp3 player the damn thing is too big, and I cant say much for the web browsing feature since I don't do web browsing on the go. As for trying to move onto the online downloading market with the PSP, their just beating a dead horse.
I'd like to say the PSP is Sony's biggest blunder, but it's not. The PS3 is turning out to be the titanic of the industry with all the bad press. But the PSP is a pretty massive blunder too. There's just too many bad moves to make the system viable. Here's a short list.
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1. Bad Advertisements. Everyone talked about them, everyone said "WTF", everyone shook their head. Again this isn't an awful move, but combine it with the rest of this list and we got the "PSP".
2. Attacking the fans. People bought the PSP and homebrewed it. Sony closed the gaps. Now this isn't a bad thing but it forced people to make decisions between upgrading to buy games and leaving it at 1.5 to play homebrew. Overtime we've found ways to upgrade to 3.0+ software and play homebrew, however the sore feelings came early and lingered. When people were forced to make that choice and picked homebrew, then sony lost money right there. Games is all Sony's going to make money on.
3. UMDs. Not the worst idea ever but UMDs are clunky and a poor format. They are also slow. Notice that DS is a cartridge. Yeah they are outdated but they also have no load time, and little if any problems. Sony was smart enough to protect the disc instead of putting the laser right next to it, but the UMD is a failed concept that no one was going to buy. Blu-ray is slightly better, but forcing it on the consumer was bad voodoo.
4. Ambition, they made the best handheld, but it cost them a shit ton of money. The DS cost less, and sold for a profit (or close to it) It's similar to the PS3, 900 dollars or so for production of the version 1 consoles. Selling for 600. Why start a marathon a mile back from the starting line?
5. Ports. This is perhaps the most damning of them all. The PSP is the Playstation portable. The Gameboy is the game boy. Not the NES portable, not the Famicom portable. The Gameboy is it's own system. The PSP on the other hand is a suped up PSX or a downgraded PS2 but it wasn't it's own system. For that neurotic nerd who loves his PS2 so much he wants to buy the games a second time for his PSP so he can have it on the go great, but there's only a couple exclusives out of something like 200 games. Lumines? great. But there's just too much other crap that didn't work. It's great that I can now play burnout, Golf, or any other PS2 game on the go, but instead of the full experience off the DVD, I pay more money for downgraded graphics.
Consider that people play the DS while sitting next to full home entertainment systems, but I find it hard to believe people would do the same for the PSP. I know I wouldn't.
6. Not being nintendo. Let's get petty for a minute. Sony isn't nintendo. Sega, Neo geo, atari, and other all tried this before. The gameboy worked, everything else failed. Why? Who knows but challenging nintendo on their home court and you're going to be laughed off the field.
These are just some of the reasons the PSP failed and none of them are "that bad" but the wave of them keeps coming. They continue to produce port after port (next up Parapa the rapper, and Disgaea, and maybe FFT, and then
The PS3 is starting to turn this way, every month it seems there's a new bad story. Hell make that every week, and you'll see that Sony has a long way to turn both of these products into "success stories" but I think we are reaching the point where it's too little, too late.
As time passes, more and more people will be buying HDTVs. Not necessarily 5' plasmas, but HDTVs nonetheless. As they do, they will want their movies in high def as well. People only have so much money, and space to deal with. I don't even remotely understand what you are trying to say here. People have *always* "only had so much money", and they bought TVs, computers, video players, etc. in the past. I don't see why they'll stop any time soon. As for space, a similarly sized non-CRT HDTV takes up much less space than a CRT.
The only way I can see HD-DVD or BD failing is if their uptake is so slow that a downloadable HD format overtakes them (this *should* happen, but you know how the movie industry is). But at this point, it's far too early to count either format out (although I wouldn't bet on HD-DVD, the adoption rate of both are still so low that either could win overall).
"The PS3 is also hardly to be considered a failure (no matter what stories you may read on /.) as it has sold over 3.5 million units in six months. "
Sorry but it isn't just what I read on Slashdot. I got my Wii finally, when I was getting a second controller the woman at the local Walmart was telling me, "I just don't understand. When they first came out everybody was so excited about the PS3. Now they just sit on the shelf and we can not keep the Wiis in stock." I suggest you take a look at the sales figures and the store shelves. The PS3 is selling fewer units than the PS2! Not a failure yet since it is still a new console but I am sure it's sales are disappointing.
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that's because since acquiring cbs/columbia pictures, the media side has taken firm control of sony and nothing gets made unless it passes muster with the media division.
for example, the minidisc was saddled with format killing drm because that's how sony music wanted it. it's an excellent example of what consumer electronics would be like if the media companies had their way. contrast that to the sony of the 1970s that could make the the betamax without having to first ask permission of the movie division.
it's a bizarre turnaround to what the purchase of columbia pictures was supposed to be: a captive library of audio and video material used to drive sony's next consumer electronics innovation into the market. when the media division made more money than the elctronics division for a few years, the media executives were able to take over. furthermore, crippling the consumer electronics division's ability to make audio and video devices that customers might want to buy also prevents the consumer electronics division from being successful enough to take back control of sony. in a way sony is a microcosm of the conflict between the consumer electronics industry and the media industry.
it seems like the last really runaway consumer electronics hit sony had was the original playstation. made because sony executives were annoyed at having to kowtow to nintendo's licensing requirements, as i recall, the original playstation was designed to be easy to develop for and the company even made a hobbiest development kit. the original playstation may have been that last piece of electronics sony made that came, unmodified, from the engineering side. i expect all that drm and pita development on the playstation 2 and later all comes at the 'request' of the media executives who only want their customers to be passive consumers and not users.
when religion is no longer the opiate of the masses, governments will resort to real opiates.