The PSP Comes Into Its Own
November 25th, 2007A funny thing happened over the past year - the PSP became something more than a novelty. I’ve had my eye on it for a while now, but it wasn’t till I read IGN’s holiday shopping guide that it occurred to me just how many PSP games interest me. A shortlist: Disgaea, Final Fantasy Tactics, Jeanne D’Arc, Ratchet and Clank, Silent Hill Origins, and to a lesser extent Socom and MGS. That’s not to say that all of them intrigue me equally, but these are all solid titles that belie the PSP’s near-invisibility relative to the DS.
In any case, I’m considering picking up a PSP this holiday season if I can find some decent deals. Anyone else out there have one? Is it worth buying?
(Why the PSP is having so much trouble is out of scope for this discussion, but it seems to me that people play the DS very differently than they do Sony’s miniature device. The games I’ve listed are essentially variations on hardcore franchises. Yet Japanese gamers have been flocking to the Brain Ages of the world on DS - is it possible that their interests have shifted over the past few years?)
Posted in Geoff, PSP |
November 25th, 2007 at 4:14 pm
I’ve got one. It’s got a surprisingly good library now — I didn’t take it seriously at first either, but it’s getting downright respectable.
I’d caution you to stay away from MGS — I hated it so much I gave it away as a gift. The rest of your list looks good, and there are some other worthwhile titles as well.
November 25th, 2007 at 4:32 pm
PSP hardware success has no correlation with its software success [or lack thereof, really]. People use PSP to play old atari, nintendo, PSX, sega, etc games, and miscellaneous media [i.e. delicious p0rn].
It depends on how you view it, but PSP fails miserably in light of 2004 expectations.
November 25th, 2007 at 5:02 pm
If you intend ot use it for homebrew and emulation…then yes.
If not no. I have a hacked psp and can thus play any game in its library for free. I’ve done it a grand total of once. While it has a buch of games with decent ratings….they all suffer from the same problems. Relative to nearly any other platform, psp games are light on the content and tent to have and controls. Ratchet for instance is about half as big as one of the ps2 games. And the weapon selection suffers accordingly.
Nearly every psp game I’ve played has had some form of near crippling camera or control problem.
If you wnat to use it as a playstation 1/snes/genesis/ipod….then go for it. But otherwise the selection of games doens’t merit its purchase. i bought one about 6 months ago andn it has gotten more use as an mp3 player than anything else. Until I got custom firmware, it was basically useless.
November 25th, 2007 at 5:53 pm
@Rob,
“I’d caution you to stay away from MGS — I hated it so much I gave it away as a gift.”
Geesh, having said that I hope you didn’t give it to a friend.
November 25th, 2007 at 6:10 pm
Haha… it was to a friend, but one who’s a self-confessed MGS junkie. I figured he’d get way more pleasure out of it than I was getting.
November 25th, 2007 at 6:48 pm
I’ve been eying one for awhile now as well, but decided I already have enough to play at the moment.
Strangely enough, the list of games that you’re interested in isn’t that similar to mine. I’m more interested in Crush, Daxter, Dracula X, possibly Syphon Filter, Mega Man Powered Up and this God of War demo disc that I already have in my possession (with no way to play. =) ) On your list I might be interested in MGS: Portable Ops, Ratchet, and Silent Hill… FF: Tactics was never really a favorite of mine on the PSX and I’d have to take a closer look at Disgaea to see if it was for me (but I’m guessing it might be a bit too slow for my tastes).
November 25th, 2007 at 7:09 pm
“Japanese gamers have been flocking to the Brain Ages of the world on DS - is it possible that their interests have shifted over the past few years?”
No, the market expanded to include those who traditionally did not play games, and that population is much larger than the one who traditionally played games.
So it makes sense to see games like Brain Age sell more, since less of the new gaming population (which you can call a mixture of the new “casual” gamers and the old “hardcore” ones) buys more traditional titles.
November 25th, 2007 at 10:15 pm
Viewtiful,
I’d love to see some numbers proving that, because it seems more like Nintendo marketing spin than reality. The statistics I can find indicate that the GBA has lifetime sales of around 53M units as of the end of 2003. The DS, according to another article, has lifetime unit sales of 40M as of the beginning of this year. (Article links at the end of the comment.)
If the DS has sold fewer units than its predecessor - or even comparable numbers of units - it suggests to me that it’s not making enormous inroads among a new population while retaining the old one. The Wii is doing a much better job of that. The most likely possibilities, then, are either that existing gamer tastes are changing or that Nintendo is targeting a different but similarly sized population segment for the DS.
GBA Sales: (http://journal.pcvsconsole.com/?thread=8498)
DS Sales: (http://www.gameblop.com/2007/05/02/nintendo-posts-record-year-on-strong-nintendo-ds-sales-and-breakthough-reception-for-wii/)
November 25th, 2007 at 10:55 pm
“it’s not making enormous inroads among a new population while retaining the old one.”
I think that supports viewtifuls point. I think he is saying that the DS is not retaining “the old one” and thats what is appearing as a “change in taste”.
I think both ideas are interesting and neither one is really supported by circumstantial sales numbers.
I think to see the “reality” through the spin, you need to combine the PSP and DS sales numbers. Its likely that the PSP is selling to a lot of the traditional gamers along with portable multimedia consumers while the DS is selling to a fair amount of expanded audience along with some traditional users. We have no way to tell, but there are certainly more far fetched ways to explain a wholesale “change in taste”.