Ubisoft's Rob Cooper has called Sony out on its handling of the PSP format, stating that it lacks direction and is too intimidating for the "casual" crowd. Ubisoft feels the platform has potential, but wants to see Sony steering it competently before throwing any real weight behind it.
"Sony needs to show us a bit more about what its plans are to convince the publisher to invest lots more money into it," stated Cooper. "Especially when you've got the DS selling at such a tremendous pace.
"I suppose it's almost too technical for the casual person, those that are buying the DS at the moment want a few buttons and not a lot more. It's so simple what [Nintendo] has done. That's where I think Sony has gone a little bit too complicated, they've over-specced it, the price is too high and they need to go back to the drawing board and start again."
Ignoring the myopic reference to the misused "casual" buzzword, it is certainly true that the PSP has suffered from some poor handling by Sony. I love the system, but I remember back when I originally had one, I hated the thing. I felt I'd paid a lot of money for a machine that couldn't figure out what it wanted to do, so it settled on doing nothing. I don't feel that stigma has gone away, even though it has a fair few solid games on it.
Cooper did say the PSP was a "beautiful" system and the poor sales in the West are a shame. Still, with the PSP remaining highly successful in Japan, I doubt things will change soon.
Contest:
11:09 AM on 06.05.2008
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I'll admit, their software is not as robust as the DS's but they have a solid library and if you own the PS3, Remote Play never gets old.
All Sonyt needs to do is another price cut here in our neck of the woods and they're good.
no system
The DS is a controller, two frickin' screens, 4 buttons, and a stylus that you have to wave around on the screen to do some special crap.
As for technological specs? WTF? Isn't better technology actually better in the first place? I would think so....I just don't understand Ubi's statement at all.
It's too much for a gamer, as far as I am concerned. I've owned two PSPs in my life. One I currently have, the other I got ride of back when the system's library was a joke. When asked why I'd sold it on, I simply replied "I'm a gamer. I don't want to watch Spiderman 2 on the bus."
I love the system for all it can do, but a PlayStation product benefits from being marketed as a gaming product first and as a multimedia center second. Sony tried it vice-versa with both the PSP and PS3 and it didn't help them at all. Both are terrific pieces of hardware, but sadly suffered due to poor management.
psp is very good now and has been for a while(since the first syphon filter,killzone liberation and some other games were released)
looks @ SF:logan's shadow
Fuck you ubisoft
I like my little PSP. It's like a universal emulator in my pocket; complete with stereo. Plus whatever other apps I decide to make the effort of putting on it. It's got a couple good original games, and a whole slew of oldies but goodies. What with Suikoden on the way. And I would love to see Xenogears.
And it's not that the PSP is a bad platform, it's that companies like Ubi can only find success in games like Petz, which pander to the DS. Ubisoft has only tried to put bad ports of console games onto the PSP, and they don't sell because they aren't good games. Konami, D3, Square, and of course Sony have done it right, in many different ways. Excluding D3, they have all done a fantastic job in bringing PSP specific versions of successful franchises, all of which have translated quite nicely.
The PSP takes some basic computer knowledge. Is that the dividing line between hardcore and casual? How the hell did digital camera's take off if we're expecting mass consumers to be so brain dead?
All in all, we have a someone who is telling Sony publicly that they need to dumb down the platform to be successful. The last thing I want Sony to do is to start pandering to a fad game design. And why would they need to? The PSP has had more critically acclaimed games in the past few months than Ubisoft has had all year.
They made Petz. Game over. You're opinion any quality in the industry is void past that point. I hope Sony adds manual installs to the next gen PSP out of spite.