Poor Sony. At last year's E3, they unveiled their newer, slimmer PSP in shiny new colors, promised more games were coming, and basically convinced me that there was hope for the little handheld. I bought my red one, happily buzzed my way through Crisis Core, and waited for all the other excellent releases that were promised.
And waited.
And waited.
Sigh.
In a recent interview with Pocket Gamer, Sony Europe VP of publisher and developer relations Zeno Colaco spoke about the problems hindering the PSP's success, saying "We need to revitalize the developer community to get behind PSP." Colasco also mentioned that the handheld had relied too heavily on third party content, among other issues.
On the future of the PSP:
"So from my perspective, what's important is we continue to tell publishers and developers that there's an opportunity to make money on PSP, which is something that will become apparent over the next two years as the network services are developed,"
I'm trying to be patient, Sony. I really am. I love the little handheld, and if there were more quirky games for it I would probably play it a lot more. I loved Patapon, now all you have to do is keep it up. Have you already given up, or are you still hoping to see the PSP get more developer action?
[Via Games Industry.Biz -- Thanks, Joe]
Contest:
12:27 PM on 06.24.2008
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It's really that simple: DS is winning due to it's 1st party titles, PSP is loosing out due to it's lack of 1st party titles.
In saying that Sony also need to start buying up smaller 3rd party developers who have great ideas for PSP games and get them to work.
Whilst Nintendo are in bed with Sega and a whole host of US/UK developers, creaming themselves over the Wii and DS - week in week out we see another PSP developer leave.
Stop the rot now or you might as well just quit.
but...uh...still? the screen is nice!
Sony's greatest strength has also been their biggest weaknesses: Their dependence on third-parties. Sony has always succeeded due to the support from third-parties they've received, but now we're seeing with the PS3 and PSP they really are hamstrung when they have to lead the pack themselves.
i feel your pain, but on the bright side, Space Invaders Extreme is a lot of fun.
Custom firmware. With that in mind, about 90% of the PSP owners just download the iso files on a big mem stick and move on. Whereas the kids and people who don't know anything about it (and still trying to buy UMD movies for it....lol.) continue to give sony and 3rd party developers money. It's not that it's the PSP's fault, it's sony's fault for not making the little handheld so easily hackable.
The same could be said for the DS...but the DS is loved by all which easily makes up for the small amount of R4 users out there. PSP and its teen/up force are alittle smarter than your average DS gamer.
I personally think 3rd party developers are scared to make a game on the PSP to lose sales to homebrew/custom firmware users. Plus just as sony loves to do, they talk about playing games online when only a few games on the PSP as a whole are actually online. It still amazes me how almost everytime I look at a game that SHOULD be online, it's simply "Ad Hoc" and nothing more.
Though, I'm sure if you bought a PSP just for Patapon and Loco Roco, you might be a little disappointed in the lack of titles in that style...
Then again, I only play with mine for like 45m during my lunch break each day :P
@Sueng - How do you define successful? Personally, I'd say the PSP has already been pretty successful, you know.. with 37 million units out the door and all :p
It's FAR from being a failure of a system in any respect. The problem is that, game-wise, it's DEFINITELY losing steam.
Not 6 months ago I could have spouted off a list of a dozen games I was looking forward to on the PSP, and all of them were coming out in nicely spaced intervals over the next 6 months. Now, I can only think of two I'm even remotely interested in playing (FF: Dissidia, which could be complete trash, and Loco Roco 2) and neither of them are coming out til years end AT BEST.
The PSP is in a long dry spot right now. Luckily, I've got plenty of unfinished games on other systems to keep me busy. But Sony needs to up the ante if they expect people to keep shelling out money for their machine.
A PSP is the only thing I don't have for this generation of game systems. I just got a PS3 but mainly for Blu-ray.
I think that dancing wookie GIF is more entertaining than a PSP at the moment. The new Kingdom Hearts might change my mind though.
However, if you go back to the PSP's objective--not to establish a foothold in the portable industry, but to single-handedly crush Nintendo in it (remember, analysts predicted the PSP to beat the DS just as they did PS3/360 to beat Wii), it is indeed a failure in that regard. They just set the bar too high for it.
so true so true