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Gamers Abandoning DS, PSP In Favor of Smartphones
donniebaseball23 writes "IndustryGamers reports on new research from Interpret, which shows that more and more people are turning to their phones for game time, leaving the DS and PSP behind. 43.8% of the phone/DS/PSP gaming market plays games on phones, which represents a significant 53.2% increase over the past year. At the same time, Interpret says that the proportion of those who play on the DS or PSP has fallen by 13%. The company notes, 'Gamers appear to be defecting from their handheld gaming devices to phones to get their gaming kicks: a full 27.2% of consumers who indicate that they play games on their phones only (and not on the DS/PSP) actually own a DS or PSP, but do not actively use the device(s).' Notable games industry analyst Michael Pachter also recently commented that handhelds continue to decline and Sony's much rumored PSP2 would be 'dead on arrival' as smartphones continue to gain steam."
Yesterday the Playstation Phone was detailed. Sony Ericsson also already has a long history with mobile phones. Now, Nintendo might be in trouble here..
This might work for some genres but the staples of gaming, platformers, shooters, etc, require the precise control of a d-pad.
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Isn't the PSP2 going to be an Android Playstation Phone?
The only thing dead on arrival is this speculative article.
Regardless, I own a Motorola DROID and until they release games like "Zelda: Spirit Tracks" for my phone, I'll need my DS.
I would speculate that this is growth of the gaming market and not replacement like the summary seems to imply. I can't argue with the numbers but my gut would say that people who game on their phones do so on both devices. And nobody's going around buying a phone just to play games on so the DS & PSP still fill that market exclusively from cellphones.
a full 27.2% of consumers who indicate that they play games on their phones only (and not on the DS/PSP) actually own a DS or PSP, but do not actively use the device(s).
I'm not saying this quote is wrong but I am awfully suspect of that figure. They claim an online sample size of 9,000 but they don't say how many of those actually own both a gaming phone and PSP/DS. I would be interested in the hard numbers.
My work here is dung.
Correction: Some regular people (not gamers) are turning to their smartphones for gaming. Gamers are people that have a discerning taste for games. Smartphone game quality is lacking (as are controls) when compared to a dedicated mobile gaming device. I've tried several smartphone games, and they are little more than time wasters. You play them a few times, and probably forget about them in a week. There are several titles for PSP that I actually make time to play. There are NO mobile phone/smartphone games I will MAKE time to play.
So the percentage of handheld gaming conducted on solely gaming device fell.
What this doesn't prove is that gamers are "abandoning" the DS and PSP.
It could just as likely mean that the pool of handheld devices that are game capable has exploded.
If you had 150M handheld gaming devices back when phones sucked for gaming, and now there's a billion total - with 200M being dedicated devices and 800M being smartphones that can game effectively, then yes - the percentage that's DS/PSP plummets, while the total number still climbs.
Without some actual numbers, I'm skeptical that it's wholesale abandonment. The growth of the pool is far more likely to me.
So already I can't get popular titles to run on my kick ass workstation with high end graphic cards and monitors. To play them I would have to buy a crappy console and hook it up to my mediocre TV.
Now, people want to move from that to playing on a phone?
Seems we are going backwards here.
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a few months ago when I was visiting an electronics store, and I saw a load of kiddies around the ipad displayed playing games, while the ordinary nintendo ds section and also the PSP sections were abandoned mostly. Ok it also has something to do with the device actually been usable while the others merely had the usual console displayed but it was blatantly clear where the train is heading.
Add to that that the average handheld game on the ds and psp is around 45-50 euros here while the handheld games are dirt cheap and a no brainer to buy. In the end you spend
more on smartphone games than you would on the average console.
Classical example of low prices sellls more cashwise than the average console game.
What I would say is this is a real thread for Nintendo which always had its stronghold in the handheld gaming sektor from where it could start its console experiments. That stronghold is seriously under attack. And in the usual Nintendo manner they probably will realise it two years after they are stone dead in the market.
If you want to play a game designed for the d-pad, then you should play that game on the proper platform.
Agreed. For a great many great games that platform is not going to be a phone.
Cell phones are all but required these days. Gaming platforms, not so much.
I've never owned a cell phone, but I have a DS in my pocket right now. It would take some damn good games to get me to buy a cell phone, but because of the controls few great games are possible.
The physical d-pad is slowly becoming the niche rather than the norm, and hard core gamers are just going to have to deal with it.
Probably true. Quality is almost always a niche interest. Gamers might in fact be moving to cell phones, that doesn't mean it's a good thing for games, or gamers.
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Wow, you guys are missing the point.
No sh1t a smartphone is limited! But no one wants to lug around a phone, a PC, a camera, mp3 player, a pager, kindle and a PS3!! Hello! Thats why its practical to buy a $300 phone in lieu of a nice phone/camera/etc. Im honestly bewildered that this concept is such a surprise or if all the dissenters have Sony stock.
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For some reason a lot of people are ignoring the obvious: the iPod touch (and old iPhone's given to kids). Away from consoles, I mostly see kids playing with these (and with their parents iPhones). One friend's kid plays with his Android phone, but she's just 1 and mostly chews on it.