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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."
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 Yeah they are outdated but they also have no load time, and little if any problems.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.