Slashdot Mirror
Sony's New Development Strategy For the PSP
An anonymous reader writes "Sony is finally responding to the threat posed by the iPhone, and has started aggressively courting developers around the world to work on digitally distributed games for PSP in a bid to grow the amount of software offered on its handheld. And, Develop has revealed, the firm is planning to introduce a streamlined content pipeline for the platform — which includes abolishing concept approval — plus cheaper devkits, shorter quality assurance processes, and very low price points for new games. It hasn't totally abolished the barriers around the platform for homebrew and indie devs, but it's a start."
I already buy few PSP games. Are you trying to make me completely stop? Digital distribution is a guaranteed way to do it.
stuff like the second stick, touchscreen, etc weren't going to happen. That sort of stuff could come in the form of the PSP2, which I can't help but think the PSP GO is a testbed for.
If only for the fact they never opened up their UMD media format for anyone else to use - it's nice to see them fall behind.
It's not the games that need developing, it's the PSP itself. An optical drive that you can't write your own discs, a proprietary memory standard (to boost Sony sales), and build quality that does not belong in their once famed quality of the 1980's - preferring style over everything else. Oh, and each new version goes up in price.
I'd really love to have a PSP*, but locking me into an awful, overpriced memory standard is a deal breaker. Well, not quite, it has "SONY" written on it, THAT'S the deal breaker.
* Used a friends device
Take Nobody's Word For It.
Sony doing so well? Sure, the legacy PS2 is doing good, but the PS3 seems to be failing. Sure, there are 50 million PSPs, however there are 100 million DS consoles sold. While I can pick up a Wii for $250 or a low-end 360 for $200, I still have to pay $400 for a new PS3 (!). That means for the price of a PS3 and a game, I can buy both competing consoles. Plus reception for the PSP GO has been overwhelmingly negative. At this point Sony needs every sale they can get.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Selling the hardware is not the end of the marketing story. Sure, Sony may have sold 50,000,000 PSPs, but how many are actually being used? how many games are sold on average? standard deviation?
I have a PSP. Great gizmo. Thing is ... I don't use it. I want to, but I don't. I keep looking at what games are for sale with the intent to buy some but ... they're boring, clearly second-tier products. I bought it as a credit card "reward", and played thru Daxter which came with it. But when it comes to shelling out real money for available games, well, maybe not. At least port the hot legacy games to it, names like Grand Theft Auto (the original), Max Payne, and others. Get some modern games on there that don't really require heavy-duty processing like Portal. Give me a choice of games that aren't "off-PS2". Doesn't help that the battery discharges/dies with disuse, that it doesn't charge thru USB (at least without fiddling with menus), and text entry is just downright stupid. Even with those quirks I really do like it - I just can't find anything I want to run on it.
So yeah, 50M PSPs have been sold. Thing is, console manufacturers expect to offset the hardware costs with big software sales, and I'm not sure enough of those PSPs aren't just sitting around discharging & collecting dust.
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
I'm glad to see that Sony's trying to court developers, but it just seems like too little too late for the PSP. The PSP is just too dated as a platform to hold much appeal to me at this point. The PSP Go managed to ditch some of the legacy problems of the PSP that were holding it back, but missed a lot of obvious updates the platform could have used (2nd analog stick, capacitive touchscreen, flash based physical media, longer battery life), and it came at the cost of a ridiculous price increase.
I own a PSP (1001) and I can say that the decision to not have a second analog stick was a good idea. Holding a personal game system just isn't the same as holding a standard console controller. With a controller, you're able to grab the whole device at once, fully in both hands, leaving both your thumbs free to run the analog sticks.
With a mobile game device like the PSP (or DS), you are holding it essentially, from the edge. With one analog stick, you can hold the system with your right hand and run the analog control nub with your left hand. This actually works well, even when you need to tap the action buttons - like in a platformer (Daxter, for example.)
To be honest, stuff like the second stick, touchscreen, etc aren't going to happen.
On your other points:
Flash-based media. Yes, it would have been really cool to distribute all games on MemStick Duo or some such, back when the PSP was first released. But the UMD can hold 1.8GB of data. Now think back to when the PSP was new - how many 2GB flash drives did you see, and how expensive were they? For any that you found at the time, they were massively expensive. Sony would never have been able to sell games on MS Duo then. Sure, they can do it now - which is why you are seeing Sony change to move more PSP games to digital download.
Longer battery life The main reason the PSP's battery doesn't last as long as the DS or GBA is because it uses spinning media (UMD). I have a bunch of games for PSP - some on UMD, some as digital download. The system runs much longer when I'm playing a digital download game (like Hot Shot Golf: OT ... playing it again now) than when I am playing a UMD-based game. You'll see longer battery life get advertised as more games are pushed to digital download.
My own wishlist:
Support WPA2 in the wireless stack. A few months ago, I moved my home wireless AP to use WPA2, then realized my PSP couldn't get on the network. Had to change the AP to use WPA again.
Give me a better browser. The browser in the PSP looks and feels a lot like the browser in the PS3 - so points given for consistency. But both are pretty crappy browsers. Some sites don't render properly at all on the PSP. My local news station just did a site redesign, and now I can't view the local weather forecast. Which is (was) my PSP homepage. I'd love to see a stripped-down Gecko browser in there. Or Opera. Something better than what I have now.
Support plain SD instead of MS Duo. Is that what the other memory slot is in the PSP Go? Not sure what this would mean to Sony and copy protection - I suspect that's a key reason they put MS Duo in the PSP.
It's kind of interesting, how you can look through a thread, and notice certain characteristics that show that various anonymous cowards are in fact the same person. The interspaced post/replay, doublespaced format, the "50 million PSPs sold worldwide" phrase, matches up with several different AC posts in this thread.
And that's fine; no rule that you can't post passionately many times. It just made me wonder, is there software that will take text samples, and calculate a similarity index to other text samples? We all have quirks, like whether we double space after a period, or the nature of the mistakes we repeatedly make (like the apostrophe in "1980's music").
> Make games that are fun.
As a gamer, I'm behind this as a general idea, no matter the platform. I'd also like to suggest the following to Sony:
Release (at least) the top 50% of your PSP game catalog as PSP digital downloads. Go through your PSP games sales records, look at which games sold best, and sell those games. Also, look at the review scores for your PSP games, sell anything that scored 7.5/10 or higher.
Just put them on PlayStation Network so we can buy them. Make it easy for us to give you our money.
Here's why that's important: PSP owners who already own the game may feel a little ripped off, since digital downloads are probably going to be cheaper than the UMD version of the game, because you aren't paying for physical media distribution. However, PSP owners who already own the game are not the primary target of this move. Instead, the target is all the people who haven't bought the game, and/or the people who may buy a PSP Go.
Those are the people that would be most interested in buying games via digital download. The PSP Go doesn't even have a UMD drive, anyway.
And it would help all the current PSP owners (like me!) who may not have bought that game (or missed it) when it came out and might like to play it.
It doesn't address new games, but it helps build up the available library of games.
I have played with my nephew's DS and I just hate the size of the screen. Having two tiny screens just isn't that appealing to me. I really like the screen on my PSP. I have one of the original units and really like the form factor. It could use more and better games, but the problems with it aren't the hardware.