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Sony Continues To Lose Ground In Mobile Gaming
donniebaseball23 sends this quote from an opinion piece at Industry Gamers:
"On Monday, news came down the pipeline from SCEE president Andrew House that Sony wants to focus on a younger audience for the PSP with future titles. My immediate reaction was one of shock and confusion. After all, in an interview with IndustryGamers at E3, Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime noted that, 'the way I would describe the market for the Nintendo 3DS would be the launch market that we had with the Nintendo DS plus the launch market that maybe PSP had.' When your primary competitor is looking to the exact market that you've catered to, why would you abandon that market? There was a time when Sony Computer Entertainment was a trailblazer, bringing things to the industry ahead of everyone else. Nowadays, however, it seems that Sony is content to merely fall in step behind everyone else and simply try hard to not fall too far behind."
After their repeated rootkits, engineered incompatibility, engineered obsolescence, higher-than-market prices, and lengthy history of consumer-hostility, why would anyone want to buy a Sony product?
I sure don't. My house is Sony free. Of course, I have had to side with the lesser of a handful of evils, but that is still better than submitting to Sony.
Oh, really? Like what? They over-hyped "emotion engine"? Their "Cell" processors?
Sony didn't bring CD-ROM to consoles, even if it all started as a CD-ROM add-on for the SNES. SEGA and NEC both had CD-ROMs for their respective consoles way before that.
Portable systems? Nintendo was there before anyone else. Portable systems with onboard storage? Nope sorry, Nintendo DSi came out before the PSP Go.
Rumble? Nope, that's Nintendo again. Analog stick? Nintendo yet again. Oh wait, DUAL analog stick? Oh yeah, great Sony innovation there.
So, what trailblazing has Sony actually done for consoles?
I haven't actually had a PSP title for a few years that I actually liked enough to play more than a week. Most didn't even last a day. Going the DS route won't help either. What they really need is good games that people want to play.
Don't you need to gain ground, prior to losing it?
Maybe they're trying to build their future audience. I suspect a lot of Nintendo's appeal to "older" gamers is rooted in goodwill from the past and nostalgia. Besides, if Sony's "core" audience has already abandoned them for DS and iOS, would it not be irrational to continue to chase them with an unwanted product? Then again, what do I know. The nerd blogs were all in a pantybunch over the PSP Go not having UMDs or dual analog sticks. I thought that refresh was pretty cool, and I happily ditched all my old UMD games to get one. It's almost as neat as my iPhone.
When the boat is sinking, its usually a good idea to repair the leaky places first and not places where it might leak later. Fat guys in suits at it again.
That, that really grinds my gears!
Everything sony touches they ruin.
And they've been doing it for awhile now...
Headline should have been "Sony to change focus to younger audience - targets Nintendo's market" - with the submitter's opinion stated *after* the summary of the linked article (start quote at 2nd sentence if you want to be lazy).
Where does the actual source article say anything about Sony losing ground?
How does the submitters' description of Nintendo doing exactly the same thing somehow lend support to that story? Sony's story, which is not contradicted by IG in their article, is not dissimilar - they're strong in one market, better than ever, but wish to grow on their weak markets (i.e: focus on your competitors' market for growth, not the market you own and saturated already).
This summary has almost nothing to do with the linked articles, and it's 90% opinion from the submitter (donniebaseball23)
I happen to agree with his opinion on both Sony's rationale and their chances, but that's not really 'news' and it misrepresents the actual 'news' part as if this is what something Sony admitted to, or actually stated as IndustryGamers' analysis.
The professionalism of Slashdot editors... what is the job description again?
this isn't what they should go after. IMO, the nintendo DS is geared towards children 5-14. I've used one, its a good console, I just don't like having to draw on a screen to play my game. The PSP has historically been made for a bit more mature market, e.g. using optical disks instead of cartridges and having a lot more teen and mature rated titles; that's why I'm buying it instead of a 3DS. I know mobile gaming for young adults is not quite as big a niche as mobile gaming for kids, but its still one that needs to be filled, and if the PSP keeps doing the job its been doing, it'll always have a market.
"People don't want to learn linux" hasn't been a valid excuse since '03.
I got a GBA imagining that similar types of games that appeared on the Genesis and SNES would make it to the system. Things like platformers or sports games like NHL 96 or the FIFA games with the isometric view. Instead the soccer games all seemed like pixelated abortions to me. They decided to make them use a 3d view instead of the isometric view and it didn't look good at all. Even with the DS they still look crap to me. I've always wondered why they just didn't use the old isometric engine that seemed to work fine and look good.
You better get those PSP sales up, Marcus, or it's right back to the orphanage for you!
I expect Sony realizes that the market for iOS, Android, and WinP7 games will continue to gain momentum in the coming years. Many adults _have_ to carry a cellphone, and the other appealing features of a smartphone mean that you can do nearly anything with a single device. I'm not such a huge gamer these days, but even my ancient (by pda/phone standards) n810 has plenty of power to give me my on-the-go gaming fix. Add the accelerated 3D graphics of the latest offerings, and who needs a portable console?
Also, last I checked, even the newer PSPs weren't what I'd call pocketable. Kids have backpacks and limited communications needs. Adults have pockets, more responsibilities, and a lot less free time.
Nobody I know with a PSP has upgraded to the PSP Go. It just doesn't make sense.
You can't play a game, complete it then trade it in for another game. The games shops lose and the customer loses too.
Before launch it was said that you would be able to swap a PSP UMD for a digital version for the PSP Go. This didn't happen, so it made migration expensive if you had an existing UMD collection.
Another problem is downloads, your PSP Go has to sit there while you download the game, which could be hours.
The PSP's dead man walking state is completely due to Sony's ineptitude. I blame is on corporate ego, after winning two console generations in a row the attitude seemed to be that they could just push their way and gamers would just fall lock step into whatever Sony "blessed" them with, regardless of price, features or support. While pushing all the "features" that the hardcore audience would appreciate, they completely neglected the most important features, games. Gran Turismo portable for instance was demo'ed at the PSP launch announcement and was even featured on the box but didnt ship until last year. The rate of first party titls has been anemic since it launched and the 3rd party support has been shrinking. Piracy can be partially to blame but an equal blame should be laid at Sony's feet for not focusing on the right aspects of the device and supporting it properly. UMD was stillborn, which IMHO was a missed opportunity, I would have gladly paid for a UMD player for the house or car but Sony for some reason chose to keep it locked up deeming the format useless, yet rather than focus on the gaming they chose to advertise it as this do everything media device while basically downplaying its gaming prowess. As a result the much less capable DS has completely buried the PSP despite the inferior hardware.
I have been trying for months to sell a PSP bundle with over 2 dozen games (admittedly nothing as recent as the last year and a half or so) and cant get any interest at any value more than the joy of taking outside and stomping the crap out of it.
When?
Please list successful innovations and dates. I'm really curious.
Nouvelles de jeux et technologies en français. TC
I think sony is being rather smart here. We're not far off from the point in which cellphones will provide all the gaming entertainment an adult would want. Buying another $300 gadget just to get better graphics while you're waiting in the airport doesn't make much sense. The only audience that'll be interested in portal gaming in the next 5-10 years are going to be the ones that don't have cellphones... i.e. Kids.
Well the supposedly upcoming Sony Ericsson Android 3.0 device looks interesting to me, with a QWERTY keyboard and a 1GHz Snapdragon CPU.
Never express yourself more clearly than you are able to think. --Niels Bohr
Three different major companies market their respective handheld devices as video game players: Nintendo DS, PSP by Sony, and iPod touch by Apple. The iPod touch runs the same games as the iPhone.
The "open" handhelds such as GP32, GP2X, Pandora, etc., all failed to even get retail distribution in the United States.
The iphone has no buttons. Not a true gaming console.
The assertion that button presence defines a console sounds silly to me. A PC has even more buttons than an Xbox 360 with four controllers plugged into it. So is the PC "a true gaming console" to you? What about mobile phones running Android OS, many of which have a texting keyboard? I'd like to clear up no true Scotsman fallacies and get Layne's Law of Debate out of the way so that we can know what each other is talking about.
I just don't like having to draw on a screen to play my game.
Then anybody who has played a PC game relying on a mouse has different tastes from you. Graphical adventures such as Myst sold millions on PC, even if the DS port might have been crap.
One reason why the DS continues to be more popular is piracy. Getting pirate games to run on a PSP requires hardware modding, while the only thing you need on a DS is to buy a cheap R4 cartridge.
When the PSP launched, it was advertised with a keyboard, camera and GPS. None of these have been launched in North America even after these many years. All of these would have been good sellers, if priced properly They had infra-red port on the original PSP and took it out in later iterations. The funny part in, in each of these, the homebrew community launched workarounds to get these things to work. The PSP has Flash support, where's yours Apple?
The PSPGo was a no-go from the start. Anyone with any UMDs in their collection would never buy one. Don't get me wrong, the UMD drive was too fragile and the UMD enclosures were the same but at least I can buy and sell used ones unlike digital ones.
For the record, the Sega GameGear is still my favourite portable gaming device and, yes, I still have one.
The original PS was a good console not because Sony blazed a new path but because they didn't. Sony put together a bunch of good, largely off the shelf hardware, for a good price. An important factor was using CD-ROM when Nintendo stayed cartridge. While it had loading times, it brought unit costs of the games down a whole lot. The electronics in cartridges ate up a non-trivial amount of the sale price, especially as they got larger. Also the PS was very easy to program for. It has a MIPS R3000a processor, a GPU that works much like PC GPUs, video decompression hardware that works with standard formats (at the time), sound chip very similar to the SNES chip (which Sony made) and that largely worked like more advanced Amiga MOD files and so on. Because the unit itself was a good price, the CDs allowed for good profit on the games, and it was easy to develop for, developers loved it.
The PS2 did blaze more trails, I suppose, with the Emotion Engine, but that was a piece of shit. It succeed inspite of that, not because of it. It was difficult to program for. However the large library of PS1 games helped it sell well and companies target the big platforms. Also the other consoles of that generation weren't great showings. The Gamecube just didn't catch on with many people and the X-box was over a year late to the game, not to mention being made by a newcomer to the videogame market. Plus Sony was able to secure some important exclusives, meaning you had to have their hardware to play some hot games.
The PS3? Well we all see how well that's doing. Sales of the console itself haven't been good and game sales have been weaker still. Many people get them "Because it is a blu-ray player," which is fine and all but games are when bring in the big money for consoles, not the hardware (sometimes that is even a money loser). Programmers are having difficulty using the Cell so often times many SPUs sit inactive, meaning that the game could potentially be better but isn't. For that matter the Cell itself was a mistake they refused to admit. It was supposed to be the graphics chip. However it turned out that it was nowhere near as capable as modern GPUs. Rather than throw it out they repurposed it as a CPU. This also meant they were behind on getting a chip designed for them, and so their GPU is sub optimal (normally you want to share system and video RAM in a console GPU, however nVidia didn't have the time to redo the memory controller when making the RSX so it splits it like you do on a computer).
More or less Sony has fooled themselves as to why they were successful. Had they stuck with the strategy of producing good hardware from available parts, good chance they'd still be on top. No it isn't innovative but that isn't always what you want in a consumer product.
Is they are used to that in the professional arena. Sony has had some great success in the pro world of forcing an all-Sony solution. The best success is Betacam, the professional cousin to their failed Beta consumer format. Betacam SP was the standard to which everything was compared for the longest time. Nearly all TV was shot on it. When digital formats were coming out it was always talked about like "This looks as good as Betacam SP," or "This gives slightly better colour resolution than Betacam SP." Companies would have all Sony cameras, decks, etc.
What the seem to continually fail to realize is that such a thing doesn't work so well in the consumer space. When you are the sole owner and producer of a technology, your competitors will try and make their own. They'll also try and undercut you, which isn't hard to do with Sony. The consumer market is extremely price sensitive, unlike the pro market.
they have a real mentality of "We can tell you what things are going to be," and get surprised when they don't work out.
There are two problems with cellphones as a primary gaming platform, one that you really can't fix:
1) Controls. Cellphones are not well suited to games. The reason the gamepad has endured is not coincidence, it is a good tool for the job. Yes you can add a gamepad, but that makes the phone much larger and people don't like that one bit. While the problem isn't completely unsolvable, it is difficult.
2) Battery life. When you do anything else with your phone, you drain the battery. There are no new magic battery technologies out there that will extend the life a long time. Play games, your talk time goes down. There's just no way around this, other than larger batteries.
This idea that everything unifies on a single device is silly, and you need only to look at other areas of life to see it is not something that happens all the time. You probably have an oven, a microwave, and a toaster in your house. Well why? That oven makes perfectly good toast (try it if you don't believe me). It is also far more flexible at cooking things than the microwave. So why do you have those other devices?
Well you have them because they do certain tasks, tasks you want, better and/or more efficiently. It is worth having the dedicated device because of that.
Games on cellphones work fine when it is a minor distraction kind of thing. You carry around some games so if you are waiting in the doctor's office you can play for a bit. They don't work for longer periods of entertainment. Spend a 4 hour flight playing a phone game and you may find you can't call your ride when you land at the airport.
While I personally never really felt the need to buy something like a PSP their target market seemed very narrow: gullible rich kids/young adults who did not mind being locked into Sony's proprietary formats.
If they wanted to lock people into formats they needed to put out some very cheap type units. Get the public hooked with a loss-leader or break even type unit that would then have them wanting to buy the high end units.
Really, I know what I'm doing...Ohhhh, look at the shiny buttons!
They pushed 3D gaming hard, their policy of discouraging developers from releasing 2D games whilst providing them with strong 3D capabilities (so strong they forced Sega, who thought 3D wasn't ready yet, to add an additional CPU and create the develpment nightmare that was the Saturn).
Sony brought gaming to a much wider audience than Sega or Nintendo had managed before. Remember the first Wipeout? Remember how wowed everyone was that they could listen to Progidy and chemical brothers whilst they race? Suddenly gaming was cool amongst nightclub going 20-somethings, not just kids and geeks. They created Gran Turismo, a game with a level of depth and wealth of content that no one had been able to match. They pushed Tony Hawk's Skateboarding, gave FFVII a huge marketing pushes. In every area the PS1 was pushing gaming in new directions and providing rich experiences.
Maybe you weren't part of the generation who grew up watching the consoles go from 8bit to 16bit to 32bit but I find it amazing anyone could brush off Sony's acheivements with both the PS1 and PS2.
at launch Apple didn't allow third-party software
Apple has done been plenty of launches since then: iPhone 3G and iPod touch 2 ("There's an app for that"), iPhone 3GS and iPod touch 3 (faster CPU), and now iPhone 4 (retina display).
They happen to play games and they have accumulated a large library over time (enough to advertise as a feature) but they are no more consoles than the Palm V or the Nokia N900 are. I think that a comparison between portable consoles makes the most sense when all involved devices were designed and intended as portable consoles.
If game developers have largely abandoned a portable console (in this case PSP and PSP Go) in favor of a platform that handles gaming well yet is not originally designed as a portable console (in this case iPhone and iPod Touch), then having been originally designed as a portable console isn't much of a bullet point. Besides, even the PSP wasn't as gaming-focused as the DS was at launch, given Sony's initial push for UMD Video.
stationary consoles don't sell as many units as portable ones.
A stationary console has two to four controller ports (except in the case of the TG16, but then almost everybody had the 5-port hub for that once Bomberman came out). A handheld has one controller. So mom will buy one DS for Abigail and one for Chester but one Wii and one extra Wii Remote+Nunchuk because then they can both Brawl at once. So to get a number that compares fairly to handheld sales, try adding controller sales to console sales.
I don't think I'm the only person that find that like kid annoying and condescending. It's a major turn-off for me.
The games out on the PSP just don't play well on a tiny screen. They're designed for a big TV and controllers. When sony shoehorns the game in to a tiny form factor it just becomes clumsy and irritating. In my opinion the DS is no different. Portable game devices with 4" screens have no real staying power.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
I quite don't understand people bad mouthing PSP. It is not about size, hardware, performance, but about having fun playing game on the go. I used to be a PC game player. Never had a console. I bought PSP last christmas, just because they are now quite cheap (new ~130, used ~80) and have large selection of good games (for adults), can be used as media player on trip and also go online if needed. Now months later I played it almost every week, multiple days at a time, had tons of fun, own more games than I am able to regularly play and not having need to try different console or put it down any time soon. Whats more, I just bought another one for the family to share for watching movies on trips. From my standpoint PSP is really really good. Very nice hardware, very nice price, very nice games, who cares what other people are saying and doing.
on a Highway to Hell.
Top Management are clueless.
Top Gaijan is "Dead on Arrival."
Financial Department, is looting the bank.
Sony, is Baloony!
Too many Loonies, and Zombie Presidents, and no brain.
My guess is that they have 21 months of cash (yen) and then it's all over.
Perhaps Takashimaya will buy them.
Sony Zombies ...
Just like the Zombies haunting the Diet.
The fate of Sony is the fate of Japan!
Thanks to that idiotic idea of removing UMD reading hardware, we could sell our used Sony PSP (not slim even) in 15 mins on Japanese eBay (or similar) site.
It took 15 minutes. No kidding, in Japan market, people bought 2x older generation that fast. I actually laughed at Japanese friend who claimed he can sell it easier than Europe. Well, he did.
Also let me tell you even a funnier thing. If you buy the new "hi tech" PSP which relies on online store... Well, good luck since online store is not global! I mean pathetic level of USA/EU/Japan only.
I know one guy who bought PSP for its excellent media/music capabilities and occasional browsing. It was like years ago.
Guy bought a single game in his life and it is "Loco Roco", pure 2D game. It is a freaky mix of jump&run with physics added. Graphics are hard core 2D.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loco_Roco
Of course, it didn't wake up game companies... It also seems Japanese game companies didn't lose the magic.
I thought this episode of the Game Overthinker was pretty insightful.
A few years ago devices like the PSP and the DS were a much bigger deal than they are now. These days most family cars have DVD players or even full game consoles built into them to keep the little kids entertained and just about everyone over 10 has a smart phone or iPad they can play time waster games on.
The only real market for such devices is very young kids who can't operate more complex devices. And eventually, someone is going to come out with a kid friendly smart phone that catches on with parents, and that market is going to dry up too.
Sony, has lots of other areas with much more potential for the future and do not need to keep focusing on the dying industry of hand held dedicated gaming devices. They're going to milk the PSP for every drop of cash they can before it runs dry and has to be put down but they'll likely to be looking to turn the mobile gaming focus over to Ericcson.
PSP Sucks sorry to say :l
http://bullybeatdownonline.com/
You post a rant like that about Sony and then look towards Microsoft. ??? You must really be a masochist! I haven't seen Sony even come close to Microsoft; after all, Microsoft harmed an entire industry (PC)!
You make a kick ass game platform year ahead of it's time, charge too much for it, and of course industry support takes a little while to warm up. By the time the game industry fully supports you (arguably), another niche finds you, the scientific community. Rather than get their parents to buy one, these folks buy 5 to 100 and require no tech support. Rather than embrace the paradigm shift which stands to make you more money than expected, you orphan them with a software update. Sorry Sony. Your products are reasonably good, but you have no clue what to do with them, especially when an unexpected application rises up.
there are android pod touches its just cause they haven't got apples crazy markup
Then explain the common practice of freezing all but the most expensive handsets at Android 1.6, as Samsung has done with the original Galaxy. The original Samsung Galaxy is $300, but it's stuck on Android 1.6. The Galaxy S runs Android 2 but Google Products lists it for $600. It's like making a PSP game that won't run on a PSP 1000 because it requires a new version of PSP system software that Sony has made available only for the PSP 2000, 3000, and Go, all of which have more RAM than the 1000.
so you get a phone thrown in as well.
I already have a (dumb) phone through Virgin Mobile USA, and the plans for these Android phones cost ten times what I'm paying now ($70/mo for a typical smartphone voice and data plan vs. $7/mo for Virgin). The data plans require at least a $40/mo voice plan, and $40/mo voice plans have ten times more minutes than I'll ever use.
Of course this isn't really a big problem for the PSPGo.
One big glaring problem though, often overlooked, is that you need a PS3 to get your games.
I thought PlayStation Store games for PSP only needed the PS3 for the first few months. Since the fourth quarter of 2007, Sony has made a PlayStation Store client for PC available.
Is your dog a Scotsman? Is the iphone a console?
That depends on whether you're a fan of the Scottish Terrier breed.