Thursday, January 05, 2006
Never had a chance
The PlayStation Portable is an utterly baffling concept to me. I know it's only been out a year (in Japan) so judging its sad lineup of games is not fair quite yet, but I truly believe it will never be a haven for great, original titles. Why? Because Sony tried to do way too much in order to edge Nintendo in the handheld world, but inadvertently shot themselves squarely in both feet. Tell me if you can find a major flaw in my logic because I honestly do not see how the PSP can possibly be a creative success.
First of all, the PSP is about as powerful as the PS2. There are some things that can be done better on the handheld and vice versa, but that's not important. The PSP is essentially a portable PS2, albeit with less buttons, one less stick and a smaller medium. Because it contains the same basic chipset as the PS2 and gamers expect it to produce graphics comparable to what we've been playing in our living rooms for the past five years, the development cost of games is roughly equal to that of a PS2 title. However, there are about 95 million less PSPs than PS2s. Do you see the problem? Even when you consider how many games compete for shelf space and gamer's attention on the PS2, you're still better off making a game for that uber-console rather than fight for the small userbase of the PSP. This is a major problem.
Because of this, the majority of the games on the PSP are just ports of current games or dumbed-down versions of console hits. The best games on the systems are actually 2D titles that could have been made for the GBA if the developer chose to. Lumines and Exit are both fairly simple, and therefore cheap, games that use only a fraction of the power Sony crammed in the box. When big time developers like Rockstar and Konami are asked to bring their console blockbusters to the portable world, they create a smaller, cheaper version of the games people know and love. Metal Gear Ac!d is a card battle game that wouldn't have caused even a ripple if the Metal Gear tag hadn't been slapped on. Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories reuses the city from GTA3 with some of the features from Vice City. The most notable improvement was a multiplayer mode that was shamefully lacking in the console titles. Even this came with a caveat, though: two systems and two copies of the game required for fun. Still, these are good portable games that would never have succeded in the console world, and yet they still retailed for $50.
I understand that modeling a handheld after a console system has been done before. The GBA is just a portable SNES with less buttons. And it also has many ports along with 3rd party shovel ware. However, the games never cost $50. The system did not cost $250. It was not forcing developers to choose if they wanted to make games for the Gamecube or GBA. The PSP is in direct competition with the PS2 - both in consumer dollars and in titles being developed for it. The latest example of this is Take Two's announcement, however cryptic, that GTA: LCS would come to the PS2 this year. Apparently, even though they made a half-assed version of GTA that took way less time to make than an original title, they still couldn't pull in the cash they expected with such a small user base. They are forced to bring it to a larger group of potential buyers to recoup their costs.
I don't think every system needs to do something completely unique like the Nintendo DS does. I just don't think it's a good idea to compete with current consoles. I understand that for some people just being able to play their favorite titles on a portable system is reason enough for the PSP to exist. And I do not begrudge them their fun. I am merely saying that from a creative outlook, there will never be a surplus of great, original titles on the PSP. It is simply not cost effective for developers to choose to make a PSP title instead of a PS2 one.
First of all, the PSP is about as powerful as the PS2. There are some things that can be done better on the handheld and vice versa, but that's not important. The PSP is essentially a portable PS2, albeit with less buttons, one less stick and a smaller medium. Because it contains the same basic chipset as the PS2 and gamers expect it to produce graphics comparable to what we've been playing in our living rooms for the past five years, the development cost of games is roughly equal to that of a PS2 title. However, there are about 95 million less PSPs than PS2s. Do you see the problem? Even when you consider how many games compete for shelf space and gamer's attention on the PS2, you're still better off making a game for that uber-console rather than fight for the small userbase of the PSP. This is a major problem.
Because of this, the majority of the games on the PSP are just ports of current games or dumbed-down versions of console hits. The best games on the systems are actually 2D titles that could have been made for the GBA if the developer chose to. Lumines and Exit are both fairly simple, and therefore cheap, games that use only a fraction of the power Sony crammed in the box. When big time developers like Rockstar and Konami are asked to bring their console blockbusters to the portable world, they create a smaller, cheaper version of the games people know and love. Metal Gear Ac!d is a card battle game that wouldn't have caused even a ripple if the Metal Gear tag hadn't been slapped on. Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories reuses the city from GTA3 with some of the features from Vice City. The most notable improvement was a multiplayer mode that was shamefully lacking in the console titles. Even this came with a caveat, though: two systems and two copies of the game required for fun. Still, these are good portable games that would never have succeded in the console world, and yet they still retailed for $50.
I understand that modeling a handheld after a console system has been done before. The GBA is just a portable SNES with less buttons. And it also has many ports along with 3rd party shovel ware. However, the games never cost $50. The system did not cost $250. It was not forcing developers to choose if they wanted to make games for the Gamecube or GBA. The PSP is in direct competition with the PS2 - both in consumer dollars and in titles being developed for it. The latest example of this is Take Two's announcement, however cryptic, that GTA: LCS would come to the PS2 this year. Apparently, even though they made a half-assed version of GTA that took way less time to make than an original title, they still couldn't pull in the cash they expected with such a small user base. They are forced to bring it to a larger group of potential buyers to recoup their costs.
I don't think every system needs to do something completely unique like the Nintendo DS does. I just don't think it's a good idea to compete with current consoles. I understand that for some people just being able to play their favorite titles on a portable system is reason enough for the PSP to exist. And I do not begrudge them their fun. I am merely saying that from a creative outlook, there will never be a surplus of great, original titles on the PSP. It is simply not cost effective for developers to choose to make a PSP title instead of a PS2 one.
// posted by Tom @ 6:31 PM 
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