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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?
Sony's "core" audience has already abandoned them for jobs and taking care of their families, and it is time to get a new one (i.e. focus on the kids, who can be easily won over with a couple marketing dollars and a hip spokeskid)
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!
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
Yet I think everyone will agree that Kevin was a much better spokesperson/campaigner than Marcus ever will be.
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.
I suspect a lot of Nintendo's appeal to "older" gamers is rooted in goodwill from the past and nostalgia.
I bought a Nintendo DS Lite when it came out because had more interesting-looking "pick up and play" style titles that appealed to me when the PSP's "home console style games on a handheld" didn't.
FWIW, nostalgia had nothing to do with it- I always had a vague dislike of Nintendo due to their Disney-meets-Barney style characters, and I never grew up with them (here in the UK, the original NES was *never* particularly big nor culturally significant, mostly because Nintendo never really gave a toss about marketing in Europe at the time- even the Sega Master System outsold it in the UK, and the market remained home-computer driven until the 16-bit console era).
Nintendo identified and expanded the casual and "fun" gaming market and went for it when Sony continued to aim for the old-school "serious" gamers they thought were still their core market.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
The PSP Go was a terrible decision. As it stands, there are new games coming out now that the PSP Go can't play, simply because they won't be released on PSN.
Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep is just the most recent example.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
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.
Oops, I misremember. No normal keyboard, just a game controller. Still an interesting device though.
Never express yourself more clearly than you are able to think. --Niels Bohr
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...
Eh? I know a couple of guys that just ran a software hack on their PSPs and were able to play compressed ISOs of PSP games. No need to purchase a 'cheap cart'.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
For the record, the Sega GameGear is still my favourite portable gaming device and, yes, I still have one.
Did you get stock in eveready at the same time? Christ they were mean on batteries.... backlit screen was nice, though.
Sent from my PDP-11
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.
If you happen to have the right generation of PSP with the right firmware version PSPs can be "jail broken" for lack of better term through software. Eventually the firmware made software hacks impossible. At least that is the last thing I read about six months ago when I last checked. And I don't think anyone has even bothered to mod the PSPGo.
"UNIX is very simple, it just needs a genius to understand its simplicity." -Dennis Ritchie
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.
Casual vs. real games isn't an either/or situation ... there is a real market for real games on a handheld with real controls ... it might not be the bigger market, but it's a pretty fucking sizeable one.
Built-in buttons wear out though. I'd rather see devices that support good add-on devices. The iTouch is shaped well for it but Apple seems to make it difficult somehow as we've seen few authorized add-ons. Probably the biggest fault with iDevices is it's weak hardware accessory ecosystem.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
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.
What is killing Sony is the fact that they are in a dinosaur mentality. Yes, it took half a decade for the PS3 to get breached, and they have top of the line security. They had this mentality since the Network Walkman days. People would look at their devices (which had an excellent form factor), hear about the annoying DRM restrictions that were in your face (can't copy songs to the device, had to check them out, and that was only if the device was authorized to do so, no ability to back up stored music in a library, etc.) Yes, their security is superb, but what happens is that they end up a bit player because of it.
While Sony was with SDMI working on demanding everyone has DRM standards (such as not allowing music to be copied from a device to a computer), Apple put out a device with zero restrictions at first, then a DRM system which not just didn't bother most of Apple's users, but if someone was desperate to listen to iTunes downloads on a non-Apple device, they could burn a playlist to CD and re-rip.
Sony hasn't seemed to learn their lesson. If they not just permitted a homebrew community, but actually encouraged it, they wouldn't just sell consoles, they would be ahead of the pack, just because cool and innovative titles would be appearing on the console. If the consoles could be better used with alternative operating systems, Sony would make money hand-over-fist because people would buy the consoles and use them as NAS heads, firewalls (with USB adapters), dedicated appliances, and other items. If Sony actually built in home server functionality into the console (a la Time Capsule or a Windows Home Server), the PS3 would wind up a central fixture in a lot of homes, putting the competition six feet under.
It is ironic that the PS3, with a -ZERO- piracy rate until a week ago is doing so poorly compared to the competition. This is definitely a counter-argument to blaming lagging sales on IP infringement which the industry always does.
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.
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.
Bullshit.
I love to be able to run homebrew as much as the next guy, probably more, but if you think for a second that it would distort the market in Sony's favour you're deluded.
As for doing poorly compared to the competition - 38 million units isn't too bad in anyone's book, and isn't all that far beind MS's 47. The wii is far and away the leader but you're going to have to try very hard to persuade me that the availability of WiiQuake, OpenTyrianWii and a couple of SNES emulators for the homebrew channel has made anything more than a minor difference to the sales of a console that opened up a whole new sphere of casual gaming.
No, if they're doing badly (OMG! Only 38 million sold!) it's down to something else.
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.
The invizimals camera is not the equal to the Chotto Shotto/Go Cam in capability.
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.
I know I'm in the minority, but I'd rather simply NOT PLAY a game than have it whirr and load and run down my battery. The UMD drive is a much worse decision than the Go, in my opinion.
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.
Thats just the way it is, my old 486 doesn't run windows 7. the Nintendo 3ds games wont work on the original ds just like ps3 games don't work on the original ps, and thats the way i like it. I'm a privileged person, and if i want to buy the latest gaming machine i can usually find a way to fit it in to the budget, so i don't want some new fan-dangled super 3d game stopped by some kid cause it wont work on his gameboy. Even apple is doing it the old i-touch and i-phone things don't run ios4, at least not very well. If your trying to decide between a ipod touch and a galaxy s personally i would recommend waiting for 6-12 months cause there will be some really cool shit out there then (dual core phones with 1080p graphics). but thats always the case. as for after that i'm willing to put up with the $50/month, cause it means they give me the device; i only have one gizmo in my pocket; and data comes in very handy. if i wasn't going to bundle it all together i would wait for the next pocket gaming system with analog sticks and a few buttons. Playing a fps on a touch screen looks a bit painful.
Rocket Surgeon.