By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close
jarrod on 27 May 2010
Edit Thread
supercat said:
jarrod said:
supercat said:
jarrod said:
supercat said:
-substantiated rumors on the PSP2 which is going to kill in the marketplace

lol.  Hope springs eternal.


Meh.  The big advantage to a phone with decent CPU like a handheld is that adding games onto it will cost very little more well besides adding a few buttons or whatever, and given the high graphic requirements of games, it will likely be a HD phone as well.    This is going to be a great phone, and both sony ericcson and the games division of sony will benefit because they are working together.

The big stumbling block is that Sony's already burned a lot of industry goodwill on PSP, which didn't work out so well for most, and the Go especially has tarnished the notion of DD-only content delivery in a PlayStation handheld.  Sony's had lofty goals and great design this generation, but they invariably end up fumbling the execution in some respect.  And I don't really see adding Ericcson to the mix doing much more than further confusing things.  PSP2/phone's future is very much an uncertain prospect.


Fine, you disagree but realize that goodwill comes and goes like the wind in this industry.  Just look at the PS3 once it got the slim and started acting more competitively,  more developers want the PS3 now, and it has gotten some decent 360 exclusives, and i'm sure that the developers and industry in general appreciate sony taking the steps that it is to ensure that it will be more dominant by the end of this gen. 

 

Questions:

-why is this confusing things?  what is so confusing about buying a Sony phone marketed as a game device?  You have music phones and people just dont look at them and  go " what da heck" in some redneck drawl....How would it even be hard to use?  You'll have a game download section just like with any other phone, probably have control buttons and so forth.  Simple stuff if you play around with it.

-How has the PSP go tarnished the idea of DD for handhelds?  If the go or any other handheld were successful, wouldn't this show that DD could be done well?

Oh, I don't disagree generally, support and priorities are always in flux. It's just that PSP2 is going to find much harder path to row with press, retailers, developers and publishers than PSP1 did.  PSP1 was basically the assumed market leader once it was announced with everyone expecting Sony to repeat their 32bit thumping of Nintendo, but PSP2 will find itself in a much different position now thanks to how things actually turned out.

And honestly, I'm not seeing all that much difference in developer support for PS3 post-slim, the vast majority devs are still fixated on HD multiplatfom and PS3 was getting windowed 360 exclusives from (literally) day 1.  I mean, I guess you don't have Activision execs publicly threatening to drop support or anything, but I haven't seen much actual gain in terms of software yet.  In fact I can't even think of a major 3rd party PS3 exclusive that's been announced after Slim launched?

As to your questions...

-Market confusion was one of the chief early complaints about PSP1 actually, even coming from sources such as the president of (long time Sony ally) Square Enix.  And to some degree, it could be argued those complaints had merit, especially when compared to the "games, games, games" line Nintendo pushed for DS. If PSP2 really is tied into being a phone (even optionally) and DD only, what's to say the game industry won't have issues with it being even less focused on (and as such, relevant to) the current games marketplace?

-It flopped, spectacularly.  Like Virtual Boy level flop.  That's how.   And it hasn't tarnished the notion for handhelds in general (just look at how the industry is swarming around iPhone) just for PlayStation handhelds.  If PSP2 really is DD-only, the first words out of everyone's mouth will be "lol Go".