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Sony Winding Down the PSP
Linnen writes "Sony has started the process of phasing out its PSP handheld console. From The Guardian: 'Shipments to the U.S. ended this year, and they are closing in Japan soon. European stores will see their last arrivals toward Christmas. Launched in Japan in December 2004, it is almost 10 years old – not a bad achievement for a handheld that was almost written off early in its lifespan. ... The console struggled with high piracy levels of its titles, which meant the likes of EA, Activision and Ubisoft were reticent about committing to major development projects. However, the ease with which hackers were able to break the device's security system also meant that it became a favorite with the homebrew development scene, and amateur coders are still producing games and demos for the platform. Some look back on the machine as a failure beside the all-conquering Nintendo DS, but this is unfair. The console sold 80m units, a figure boosted by a series of excellent hardware and featureset updates, including the slimmer PSP-2000 and PSP-3000 models. '"
Owning both (I had the PSP long before I ever got a smartphone), I have to say there's no contest. One has a form factor and physical controls conducive to gaming, the other doesn't. (Or at least, not to most games, just to Angry Birds / Candy Crush-type games.)
Ubisoft treats all of their customers like pirates, and complains about piracy rates on every medium. They've claimed multiple times that their games have a 99% piracy rate and that's why they need people to download UPlay (their proprietary PC client) and install always-online DRM, even for games that they sell on existing DRM platforms like Steam. Hell, they're still doing the "limited installs with no revocations" DRM scheme on a lot of their games. For instance, let's look at Anno 2070. Let's say, in theory, that I'm at work one day and Anno 2070 goes on sale, and I buy it from my tablet to play when I get home. Just to get the game working, I would have to:
- Start up Steam
- Wait for Steam to log in
- Download the game
- Install SecuROM (still comes with Anno 2070 and has I think 5 installs with no revocations)
- Start UPlay
- Wait for UPlay to log in
- Enter my product code from Steam into UPlay to register it there
- Wait for UPlay to unlock the game on its side
- Wait for UPlay to apply patches since they do it through UPlay and not through Steam
- Play the game
In case you're not keeping track, that's three different levels of DRM - Steam, Ubisoft's always-online DRM, and SecuROM, two of which require logins with separate accounts, to play a single game. Ubisoft hated the PSP (and DS) because they couldn't force DRM onto it. Same goes for Activision and EA. It's not like any of these companies have made a single good game in years anyway.
The DS and its redesigns (DSlite and DSi) sold over 270 million units in 7 years before being succeeded by the 3DS, while the PSP and its redesigns sold 80 million in 10 years.
No contest there, EA and the like didn't want to waste their time on a relatively tiny userbase.
Piracy is just a handy scapegoat for both lawmakers and sony. Mainly they just didn't want to piss sony off by making it public they think the PSP is a failure not worth developing for.
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it!
A great many of us would have paid for the CD or DVD if we had no other choice, so yes, piracy is a lost sale.
Well, no, piracy is not necessarily a lost sale. "A geat many of us would have paid" is not the same as "every one of us would have paid."
Claiming that piracy doesn't hurt sales is a lie, but claiming that every pirated copy is a lost sale is also a lie.