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Should Sony Team With Google On a PlayStation Phone?
donniebaseball23 writes "The PSP2 is already in the hands of developers, but will Sony take the right direction in the portable sector? Following a recent op-ed on fixing the PSP business, leading game industry analysts came to the consensus that the best avenue for Sony to take is to offer a PlayStation Phone, and a strong partner like Google would do just the trick. 'Sony has the opportunity to redefine the portable games category. I think the best move would be to get out in front of Microsoft's inevitable Xbox LIVE Arcade Mobile and take on the App Store and carrier deck portals. ... They could put out a proper PlayStation Phone (and a PlayStation Pad) but these should compete with smartphones and tablets, not dedicated gaming devices. To do this quickly, Sony could partner with Google and take advantage of Android's considerable momentum,' said Billy Pidgeon of M2 Research."
Yes add more features surely playing movies music and games was not enough!!! They needed more features so they could outsell the DS!!!
The DS didn't win because it had features..... it didn't win because it had better graphics.... it won because it had more fun games to play and a bigger variety of games to pick from. Pesky consumers and there desire for choices!!!!
Sony just does not have the developer support for 2 systems, I suspect they would be better served by focusing on one or the other.
Large screen + cpu chewing apps is no good for something that meant to work unplugged at least close to a work day. In the N900 with the game gripper you already have a not so bad gaming console/smart phone, where you can play playstation/n64/mame/native games, but battery life wiill be pretty bad.
Sony frankly doesn't have a good track record with hardware in general. The hardware tends to be quirky, and after-sales support poor -- my friend had a Sony DVD player that *specifically* advertised firmware upgradeability on the box, it was very buggy.. no firmware updates ever came out for it, Sony's solution was to just buy the next model. They've done the same thing with other products.
Sony also LOVES closed systems, the antithesis of Android. They've done stuff like take a generic off-the-shelf DVD or CD drive, and put their own firmware in it, actually introducing bugs compared to the stock firmware while adding no features; some Vaios have fingerprint readers that WOULD be standard and work with generic Linux drivers, except Sony put custom firmware in so it ONLY works with Sony's (Windows-based) software. This also is something they've done again and again.
Would I buy a Sony phone? Hell no.
It's called 'Microsoft improved their products to a point where their stuff are starting to be pretty good.'
It's not hard; if you have 2 US dollars printing machines (ie. Windows and Office), you have a couple bil to waste in every sector.
That's a marriage that will never happen. Sony is all about control, and that focus on control precludes third parties and regard for what Sony's users want. See: removal of PS2 compatibility on the PS3, removal of "OtherOS" on the PS3, blocking of third-party controllers on the PS3 etc. ad nauseum. Sony wants absolute control of the eco system, but they don't get it like Apple and even Google/Android does in regards to applications and features. Hell, even Microsoft lets anyone write apps for the Windows platform. Until Sony 1.) merges the PSP into a smartphone platform; 2.) loosens their control or at least modifies it in regards to applications and monetizing their platform, and 3.) opens up to partnering with companies that understand how to work with user's needs and wants, they're dead in the water. I speak as a PS3 owner who uses his PS3 95% for streaming media to the entertainment centre, as an owner of a PSP 3000 who uses it primarily for watching movies and documentaries while traveling as well as running old console games in emulation, and I have a PSP Go that I won at a vendor event (a lucky colleague won a 32Gb iTouch AND an Xbox slim! I got the shitty end of that deal).
You realize that's really no different from any other game console maker, right?
By this age it's way too much to carry around mobile phone, gaming device and everything else. Mobile devices are a lot more powerful now and you can fit everything in your phone.
Speaking as a gamer... no, this is not true. If there's one lesson we've learned over 30 years of home gaming it's that the controllers really matter in ways that the processors don't.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
At most you only need to rewrite the graphics and maybe some game logic,
Wait, what? If you're rewriting the graphics and the game logic, you're still rewriting the game in the large, no?
I mean, what else is there? Sound, input perhaps. Not much else other than artwork (which would not be rewritten even in the case of a rewrite)
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
Google phone: Failure
Sony PSP: Marketshare loser
But what if we combined them?!
Why, we'd have a Nokia N-Gage gaming phone. Brilliant.
Hey clueless analysts, 2003 called and they want their shitty ideas back.
What's this? Would you call Microsoft a strong PC maker? Google just provide the OS, they are a NON-PLAYER in the mobile market, both in terms of name brand recognition and manufacturing/distribution capability. Partnering with HTC or Nokia (while still not have much sense) would make more sense than picking Google.
This is pure Google fanboy wishful thinking.
An Android that plays PSP Games? It need to be so locked down for Sony to accept, that you would not be able to run any non-Sony approved Android apps, that it make no sense to buy one.
With Google's lack of emphasis on user experience, Sony will need to make major changes to the UI that you would not recognize it is an Android device anyway.
This whole idea makes no sense at all.
Oliver.
In terms of user experience, HD DVD is still better than Blu-ray simply because Blu-ray still takes so long to start a disc even on a modern machine. Picture and sound identical, interactivity definitely goes to HD DVD. Yes, I have a modern Blu-ray player which is profile 2.0 and yet it is still inferior to an HD DVD player from four years back. In fact I would give the win to HD DVD on the basis of it being region free.
"I have the attention span of a strobe lit goldfish, please get to the point quickly!"
What lesson did they learn with CD, S/PDIF, HDV, Playstation (that one was to be a cooperation with Nintendo, guess who walked out) or 3.5" FDD? Generally, with a company so vast and diverse it's a bit pointless to generalize like that - many parts of them are quite open; often essentially fighting with other divisions (rootkits/DRM stuff pushed by music publishing division - bought into Sony not too long ago, BTW - while their audio players and SE music phones are decent - the latter also already have Android; or one of the more open & interoperable ebook reader ecosystems)
One that hath name thou can not otter