March 27, 2004

Gaming While Drunk: The PSP by Robert Kennan

Sony is one of those companies that seems to make vast amounts of money while never really LEARNING anything. I’ve given them a lot of crap in the past about their lack of innovation and backward thinking hardware (the lack of controller ports and RAM in the PS2 is damn near criminal) but they’ve been working to improve that and I have to respect it. The Eye Toy is great, and Lifeline was an interesting concept if not a little flawed in execution. At least they’re trying new things.

And one of these new things is getting into the handheld business, an area of hardware that Nintendo has had a stranglehold on for as long as I can remember. I remember buying the first huge “toaster” game boy unit and playing hour after hour of Tetris and Mario Land and marveling about how good gaming on the go had gotten. Nintendo even mirrored Sony’s paradox with the iterations of the the GameBoy, being on top despite comparatively weak hardware. No one can doubt the supremacy of the SP, but remember the GameGear? The NeoGeo Pocket? The Game.Com? Alright, I’m joking on that last one, but you have to admit the GameBoy has had some really stiff competition and destroys them every time. So what is Sony hoping to do here?

It makes sense for them to branch out, and Sony certainly has mind share. I just have to question some of their decisions. Optical media? I’m going to wait until Sony can make a Playstation that lasts more than a few months before I sign onto a portable that uses an optical drive. Sony also is hinting at PDA functions, video, wireless data transfer, etc etc etc. The one thing that seems absent is just how good it’ll be for games.

I (very unexpectedly!) ran into a man who works for Sony R&D at a friend’s wedding, and when he found out I worked in the industry as well we had an interesting drunken conversation about a number of things, including the PSP. While that conversation was strictly off the record (damn him) what I heard didn’t inspire much confidence, especially on the issue of price point. The easiest way to kill a system is to price it too high, and Sony seems dangerously close to doing so. They can’t deliver the hardware they’ve discussed with the rumored features at a price point competitive with Nintendo’s utterly sexy $100 price for the SP. If you read between the lines of articles written about the SP you’ll see evidence of Sony fighting the price point, taking away and adding features and being noncommittal about what the final hardware will be capable of. Then they unexpectedly push the release date back. The open faced design sure is slick, but you have to wonder about that screen getting scratched up.

While I may seem like a sourpuss on this subject on a brighter note I’m sure that the PSP is going to sell well, as long as they can keep the price under or at $150. Sony again has incredible mindshare, and I’m a huge believer that competition is great for the marketplace. This will make Nintendo work a lot harder for your gaming dollar, and after so long on top Sony eating a little of their lunch will do good to get their asses in gear.

Besides, I’m a giant gaming whore. I’m sure the first day I’ll be in line with the rest of you, my money in hand, wondering what Sony has in store for us. If nothing else, its bound to be interesting.

-Written by Robert Keenan

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