sc94597 on 14 June 2008
Here is the article if anybody cares.
Sony's handheld is far from unsuccessful. The little device absolutely destroys in the Japanese market and it provides a nice alternative to the DS here. In the world of handhelds, some consider it a Yin to Nintendo's Yang. It's the other side of the spectrum, it's the PSP. Capable of playing music, video games and the so f-ing awesome UMD, this sucker came to the table loaded with possibilities upon its release several years ago. (/sarcasm)
Even with that, Robbie Bach, President of Microsoft's Entertainment & Devices Division, sees Sony's device as a road map of how not to handle a portable.
The PSP is a reasonably successful product at the profit-and-loss level. But as a product concept, there are cautionary tales to learn from it...
While it is good at producing audio, it's not a good music player because it doesn't have local storage (except for flash memory slots). You can't keep your music there. It has a beautiful screen, but you can only get the video under the Universal Media Disc format. That format hasn't been successful.
On a game level, it has done well. But even there, it is mostly PlayStation 2 ports. There isn't much original content..
BOOM! Bach really threw down the gauntlet there. He went on to talk about Microsoft's tactics with the Zune. He cited that they wouldn't be providing a Jack of all Trades right out of the box. Instead, Microsoft wants to get one thing right before they move onto the next. They want to perfect music before video, and video before gaming.
I love my Zune, yea, I'm one of those. But I can't really see gaming on the little guy. Bach and MS see my future a little differently. They see gaming on the Zune as not only early in its stages, but they intend for it to come to fruition in the near future.
I just want them to come out with an awesome portable gaming system. Is that so wrong?
