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Developer Panel Gives Its Verdict On Sony's PSP Go
An anonymous reader writes "A panel of games industry veterans have given their final verdict on Sony's PSP Go. David Perry thinks the handheld is an excellent step in the right direction, though he wants it to include free-to-play games. Andrew Oliver of Blitz Games Studios was also optimistic: 'The iPod has demonstrated that, given a nice small device and a good interface and easy buying process, people are happy to download content. I think this will work and move gamers to accepting legal digital downloads, which is the way we want the market to go.' In total, a panel of eight developers discussed four key issues surrounding the handheld, including whether or not they will develop for it."
With the go you pay more for less.
You loose the UMD so you loose access to all the cheap used games and the old PSP will get a software update to allow you to get games online just like the go.
The features of the Go are good. The actual device I think will be a bust.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Sure, it can, but will it? One of the issues with digital downloads is that they don't necessarily respond to pricing influences like physical products do, and as a result prices are insulated and tend to stay higher. If we take a look at Steam for example, Valve wants $40 for Left 4 Dead, while Best Buy will sell it to you for $30. Or if we take a look at PSP games on the PSN store, they'll sell you the 1st-party racing game Wipeout Pure for $16, but even those evil bastards at Gamestop will sell you the game used for $7, or $15 (still $1 cheaper!) if they have new copies in stock.
Sony does not currently price digitally distributed PSP games at a reasonable level. A physical copy can virtually always be found for cheaper than a digital copy, and sales in the real world can drive that down even further. For the most part, it's foolish to buy from Sony's store so long as you have a UMD drive to play games with.
If Sony wants to go the iTunes Store model, they need to reevaluate their pricing structure. The iTunes model works because even though there's lot of crap, there's still a lot of good stuff that's competition to force down prices, and Apple's liberal pricing model will let you do that. A store and system that does little beyond locking you in to paying retail prices for new games for the rest of all time is going to be a hard thing to sell to people that know they can do better.
Seriously, way too overpriced compared to the DS. And say what you will, existing PSP owners wont convert nobody wants to throw away a perfectly fine UMD collection and rebuy all the games again.
I am not sure what Sony thought introducing it, but definitely this thing seems Dead on Arrival to me!