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."

Comments

Has Good Storage?!?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

has good storage

Help me out here. Video iPods have either 30GB or 80GB of storage built in. The PSP has freaky non standard "disks" that users can't burn or proprietary flash storage that nobody outside of Sony uses, nothing built in.

Re:Has Good Storage?!?!?

[Apparition-X]

Erm, no, it doesn't. Sorry. It uses Memory Stick, which is a Sony proprietary format. You can buy third party versions, but it is obvious that they pay a licensing fee to Sony. Compare prices for 2 GB memory stick to 2 GB SD both from Lexar, for example.

From the Article

[Anonymous Coward]

the movie industry was pulling for the PSP to emerge as a competitor to the iPod. Steve Jobs won big concessions from the music industry after running away with the digital music market. The film industry didn't want to be thrust into the same position.

In other words the Movie industry is hoping Sony succeeds because Sony will help "protect their profits", largely by forcing users to repurchase their movie collections and pay through the nose for any entertainment they want to watch. Any wagers on why the iPod with a smaller screen and bigger price tag is winning? Maybe consumers aren't the idiots Slashdot'ers think they are?

Add homebrew unfriendly to the list!

[countSudoku()]

Let's not forget the many asinine "security updates" they force fed to us early adopters to keep the homebrew developers from actually adding something useful to that oversized (physically), overpriced (duh), underwhelming (storage) "wish I was a video iPod." I thought they had pulled their collective heads out of their asses, but now that the latest updated supports PS1 downloads, but *only* via another overpriced POS, the PS3, I see that nothing has changed. They made their bed. Lie in it, Sony.

Yeah, I agree, the storage has to be the worst thing about the system, overall. UMD was a joke, right? $20 a pop for less movie/features than a standard DVD... MemoryStick?! Waste of money.
It *could* have been a contender, but it's only a nice widescreen legacy now.

Way to make every wrong turn, Sony... the one and only. :(

Thank God For Homebrew and Custom Firmware

[Croakyvoice]

Sony messed up on a lot of things for the PSP but the PSP brought Homebrew and Emulators on the PSP to the mainstream like never before and the releases of Custom Firmwares that play PSone Games at full speed really brought the PSP to the masses. Fanjita and Dark Alexs downgraders/homebrew loaders have shown the best of what can be done on the PSP. To date there has been over 1000 Homebrew and Emulation releases on the PSP. The PSP isnt all that bad.

Re:Thank God For Homebrew and Custom Firmware

[cascino]

Yes, but this doesn't help the console. If Sony would evaluate their options from the consumer's point of view, we could very easily have these features come standard on the PSP. Instead clever individuals like Dark Alex are engaged in an "arms war" of sorts where each month a new incremental firmware is released by Sony in an attempt to keep end users from taking full advantage of, for example, the PS1-PSP capabilities. The scene is forced underground, and the average consumer is kept unaware of what functionality is possible with the PSP.

I personally have a PSP and must say that being able to play FFVII in full speed on the road is nothing short of amazing. I would have easily put down $10-20 for this capability. The unfortunate part for Sony is that they still doesn't realize that *enabling* the consumer is what sells products, not disabling features from them.

Sony's blunder.

[kinglink]

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.

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 .... You get the picture)

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.

Homebrew not as good as the DS? I think not...

[DavidKlemke]

I keep hearing that the PSP doesn't have as good Homebrew as the DS. Well that's just plain not true, for example here's my source for all things PSP and homebrew: http://forums.qj.net/f-qjnet-sony-psp-forums-48.ht ml/ There are at least 180 people on this forum at any given time and there are THOUSANDS of homebrew applications in the files section. I'm sorry but all this DS fanfare about a less than lively homebrew scene just don't have their facts straight. Personally I bought my PSP early and got straight into the hacking scene as soon as I could. I've never been left feeling that I wasn't getting my moneys worth, and I've even bought a couple UMD movies (a 4 hour bus trip to Sydney can get mighty boring and sometimes ripping isn't an option). In fact I don't think I've ever come across something that I've wanted to do with my PSP and haven't been able to do. Here's just a short list of things I've done over the past couple of years using homebrew: - NES/SNES/N64 emulators - Universal IR Remote Controller - Remote access of my desktop at home over wireless or the internet - Streaming video and audio in real time over my wireless network and over the internet - Personal Organizer and calendar This is in addition to all the stuff that comes default these days with the base firmware. The PSP is a great platform and it's really worth every dollar you'll spend on it. Problem is it's not as cheap as a DS and the proprietary-ness of the platform seems to irk all the slashdotters. The DS might be selling more but that doesn't necessarily mean it's a better platform.

Re:Betamax,UMD,BluRay

[GreatDrok]

"Add on top of that the fact that BluRay is outselling HDDVD signifigantly..."

Remember how Betamax was *THE* video tape format early on but lost out to VHS in the long term because VHS machines were more widely and cheaply available. Many people assume it was porn but in fact it was price. HD DVD still has an opportunity to do the same so I don't think the current rates of BD sales are any reason the claim the format has won.