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."

Comments

Sony is already working on it

[devbox]

Yesterday the Playstation Phone was detailed. Sony Ericsson also already has a long history with mobile phones. Now, Nintendo might be in trouble here..

Re:Sony is already working on it

[Darkness404]

Right, because the phone/game console hasn't been tried before -cough- Ngage -cough-. The problem with a phone/game platform is that people have to pay a contract which takes it away from a key market: kids. No parent wants to buy their kid a $300 Ubersmartphone, pay a $40 text/call/data plan on it per month AND buy the games. Not to mention all the different operating systems that make it impractical to be a real gamer and play all the good games no matter what the platform. It is feasible for someone to own a DS and PSP, it is feasible for someone to own a Wii, PS3 and 360. It however, is impractical for most people to own an Android, Windows Mobile, Symbian, iOS and BlackBerry phone.

Re:Sony is already working on it

[Belial6]

My six year old has one. We got it for him last year. Or more accurately, I go my new phone, and he got my old one. Having a cell phone is a great idea for a kid. By having a phone, I can give him WAY more freedom, and know that he can find us if he needs something. Once we decided to get him a phone, a smart phone only made sense. Once you are already on a family plan, extra phones just are not that expensive.

That said, it isn't even close to a replacement for a DS. Sure, the numbers look like phones are replacing traditional hand helds, but the numbers are deceptive. In 1995, the same know of statistics could show that gamers were abandoning traditional gaming in favor of Solitaire. After all, if you polled PC users, you would find that a much larger percentage of users played Solitaire than any other PC game. We can see how, while technically true, it is implying something that isn't true.

Could cell phones replace traditional hand held game systems? Sure they could. Just adding regular buttons would help with that a lot. As they stand now, they don't. I still think that the solution is to make a case that the phone plugs into that has the gaming buttons. This could also be offered with a keyboard instead. This way the phone maker could make one model of phone, and sell it to the "It has to be as thin as physically possible", the "it is useless without a keyboard", and the "gaming" crowds. The key is that the protocol for the devices to talk to the phone must be standardized and open, so that you don't end up with a hundred different implementations.

D-pad

[Hatta]

This might work for some genres but the staples of gaming, platformers, shooters, etc, require the precise control of a d-pad.

Re:D-pad

[TheRaven64]

Adding a d-pad to a phone is a lot cheaper than adding a phone to a games console.

Counterpoints

[eldavojohn]

I can't get that flash thing in the middle of the report link to load so all I have is the summary and article but I do know that Nintendo claimed to sell 900,000 DS Units on Black Friday. And I think the PSP is doing poorly in the United States but is dominating the DS in Japan -- I'm guessing this report's demographic was USA centric?

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.

Correction

[choko]

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.

Ah, statistics

[RollingThunder]

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.

WTF?

[sycodon]

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.

Re:That became clear to me

[Stone316]

Both myself and my son are gamers, so yes i'm biased. However, saying that the kids are all crowded around a demo ipad playing games means nothing. Its new, they most likely don't have one at home and excited because its the latest and greatest toy. When my son goes to the games store he stuck on whatever Wii title they are demo'ing... Half the time we have the damn thing at home and he doesn't touch it.

I brought an ipad home from work for 2 weeks. Both my kids (gamer son, daughter) constantly used it the first few days. 2 weeks later I was the only one using it regularly and not for games. My son quickly reverted back to the DS, PSP, XBOX or PS3 to play games. Up until I brought an ipad home my daughter had a fund saving up for one. I think she spent it on clothes since then.. I haven't heard a peep.

There are a few games that perfectly suit an ipad. I have a few puzzle games, line tracing games, etc. but other than that, any serious gamer is going to have a portable gaming device or a console. Can't wait to play me some Black Ops on an iPad, not....

I have an iPhone and yes I play games on it but they are timewasters. I've tried the ones with the virtual keyboard/buttons and quite honestly it sucks. You end up missing because there is no tactile feed back, your finger blocks the screen because you pulled the joystick to far, end up dying, etc.

These people playing games on their smartphone probably would probably never buy a portable gaming device.