Current Ramblings
Friday, May 28, 2004
I should never, ever have discovered rec.games.video.nintendo. I went to ask for advice on charging my GBASP while in England, and now, 24 hours later, I am posting things like this:
"purda"
> I think that the Nintendo DS is going to screw over the PSP due to it's now
> widely know features and it's backed community. Plus this is Sony's first
> time into handhelds and are probably going to screw a lot of things up, make
> bad market choices, and simply all around suckyness.
I agree, and here's why:
The thing that Nokia has already learned and that Sony will learn soon enough is that portable gamers are a special breed. Maybe it's because of the Game Boy's domination of the portable market for all these years, but portable game consoles are a special market that can't be treated like normal consoles. First, you have to keep costs down - no portable gamer is going to shell out $300 for a system, and only the disgustingly rich are going to shell out $300 for something they could very easily leave on the bus. Second, you have to realize that graphical capabilities are not the most important thing. I still remember playing through the first GBA Castlevania and showing my boyfriend with awe how the background and foreground moved seperately, to which he pointed out that *real* consoles have done that since the SNES/Genesis days. Portable gamers, in general, are easily amused and don't live, eat, and breathe 3D graphics. For that matter, Third, lots of portable gamers are old-schoolers who would rather have a solid side-scroller or a well-thought-out RPG than an overwrought 3D adventure. Most of the most popular GBA titles have been RPG/Tactical RPG games and side-scrollers. So all this together means that the people who are interested in portable game consoles, who all already own Game Boys and probably have some small loyalty to Nintendo, aren't going to pay $300 for a system that will do far more than they really want it to do. They just aren't that kind of people.
posted@2:36 AM by:Trixter: 0 comments