Here we go...

I really almost kind of feel bad for Sony in this situation. They're walking into a minefield with the PSP. Nintendo has owned 100% of the portable market for how many years now? Five? Seven? Ten?

I don't think Sony understands the danger of this particular market. Handhelds are primarily dominated by a specific age demographic, those being kids age 6 to 14. Any age demographic above that doesn't hold nearly as much of the pie. Who are the people that are plunking down all the cash for those handhelds? Parents. Think about it logically: are a kid's parents going to shell out 200, perhaps 300 bucks so their kid can have another handheld? You know how parents are about these things: "Don't you already have one of those? I'm not buying you that!" That eliminates Sony's hopes of taking hold of the young gamer demographic.

What about older gamers? I'm talking about 15-25 year old nerds that carry their GBA with them wherever they go. What real motivation is there for an older nerd to pick up a PSP? Any older gamer who is interested in portable gaming already owns a Gameboy Advance, and has come to trust Nintendo as being The Bible in terms of handheld gaming. They automatically trust Nintendo, and are probably already intending to pick up a DS. So, that right there eliminates Sony's potential grasp on the older nerd demographic.

Sony's only hope of success with the PSP is to target older, casual gamers. The kinds of guys that own a PS2, a copy of GTA: Vice City and a few Madden games. Sony is banking the success of the PSP on the notion that there will be this massive influx of non-gamer college students and late-highschool kids that suddenly feel the need to play video games between classes. The PSP isn't being marketed to kids, parents shopping for Christmas presents or older nerds. It's being marketed to older "casual" gamers, and that's a really sketchy demographic to market a handheld for. I honestly can't tell you of a single college-age frat-type-guy that I know is just itching to pick up a portable gaming device.

I really think this is a bad move on Sony's part. It's certainly ballsy of them to try and wedge their way into this market, but I honestly can't see them getting anywhere with it. There's always a chance I could be horribly wrong about this, but logic dictates otherwise.

On top of that, since Sony announced that the PSP won't be coming out this year, their only option is to wait until next year. That automatically cuts the PSPs sales drastically. Why? Because the DS is coming out in November. The thing is finished, and it has a massive library of games to draw upon for launch, considering that it's backwards compatible with the Gameboy.

This winter, parents all over the country are going to be buying $120 to $150 DS handhelds for their kids this Christmas. Does Sony really think that those same parents are going to spend $200 to $300 on another handheld next winter? Hell no. Sony's only option is to release it this summer, when kids are out of school and can get jobs so they can buy the hardware themselves. If Sony waits unil next November, it will be too late. The DS will already be holding the vast majority of the market, and those buying kids will be back in school.

I'm genuinely impressed with the PSP, I truly am, but Sony will fail. Nintendo has beat out 9 competitors in the handheld market and they did it with a clunky grey brick with nauseating green graphics. They have held 100% of the market for almost a decade. Again, I truly feel sorry for Sony, because the PSP will die.

You want an even better reason why the PSP will fail miserably?

The Sony PSP is basically a portable PS2. The screen is phenomenal, the graphics processing capabilities are astounding and it's an extremely sleek machine. It is capable of handling PS2-level graphics and the size of the games will probably be no issue either.

And that is precisely where Sony's problem lies.

It has already been established in America that consumers will not pay the same amount of money for a handheld game as they will for a home console game. Consumers expect handheld games to be 10 to 20 dollars cheaper, and to try and price them any higher than that is financial suicide. Nintendo has established this fact, and consumers will expect this same amount of pricing from Sony.

On the flipside, if people buy the PSP, they are going to expect PS2-quality games. They are going to want games that stack up technologically and structurally to a hit PS2 game. The problem with that is that PS2 games cost an enormous amount of money to produce. That's where Sony makes all of their video game profit, on the games themselves. Sony already loses enough money on their consoles, so the games have to be priced very high in order to make up for it.

This creates a very serious problem for Sony. We have already established that Sony can not afford to price their PSP games too high. The public won't stand for it. We have also already established, though, that Sony can not release lower-than-PS2 quality games on the PSP. The public expects PS2 quality games. So, what is Sony's only option? Ports. Sony's only viable chocie with the PSP is to load it up with ports and hope that the public doesn't have a problem with paying for a portable version of the games they already own.

The PSP is going to fail. It will die, just like every other handheld that has challenged Nintendo.

The PSP has every possible odd stacked against it. Already the PSP has had 75% of it's potential userbase dissolved, already it has had it's launch timeframe diminished and has had that time frame lose a lot of potency. Plus, the game selection on the handheld has shown a forecast of severe weakness.

Like I said, it's a very nifty piece of technology, but it won't go anywhere. There's nowhere for it to go.


Ugly looking? Does it have to have naked women painted on the case in order to not look ugly by your definition?


Ha! Do you call a roster full of PSP ports original gameplay?


Are you insane? "Most of Nintendo's games are multiplatform." Pardon me, sir, but I'd like you to tell me what other platforms any gameboy game ever made has appeared on. I'd like you to tell me what alternate platforms (besides the Phillips CD-i Zelda games) any of the Mario, Zelda, Metroid, Donkey Kong, Star Fox, F-Zero, Fire Emblem or Pokemon games have appeared on besides Nintendo platforms.

On top of that, I'd like you to name a single child (people ages 5 to 12, we'll say) that would be capable of beating F-Zero GX, Mario Kart: Double Dash, Metroid Prime, Mario 64 or Fire Emblem. I had a hard fucking time beating those games, there's no way a kid could do it.


Again, are you insane? The PSP will have a maximum number of possibly 50 games at it's launch. The DS will have well over 600. Why? Because it's backwards compatible with the GBA. Pull your head out of your ass.


All the hardware in the world won't save the PSP. Let's take a quick look at the annals of history, shall we?

Gameboy: Clunky grey brick with nauseating green graphics, two face buttons and poor sound capabilities.

Vs.

Sega Game Gear: A slightly prettier, black brick with more roundness to it, more face buttons and color graphics.

The winner? Gameboy.

The same thing occured every single time a new portable competitor entered the market. The Atari Lynx, the Sega Nomad and the Nokia N-Gage have all been technologically superior to the version of the gameboy that they have competed against, and they, along with 5 other technologically superior competitors, have fallen before the mighty Gameboy.

The PSP will have a terrible selection of games throughout the entirety of it's lifespan, it will cost far too much for the key portable gaming demographics to afford and it will be released too late for anyone to care.

PSP dies.