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PSP Go Badly

The Comic Adventures of Hsu and Chan, Game Designers

by Norm Scott | Sep 28, 2009 6:18PM PST

A quick note for anybody confused upon their arrival, here -- the final part of "The Terrible Secret of the H&C Blog" will be going up Wednesday, Sep. 30, when it's more appropriate.

The PSP Go -- bold, new step into the future of gaming, or shameful, overpriced doo-dad from people who should know better?

The idea of a world without physical media is, honestly, a bit frightening to me -- and not just because, at the age of 31, I am now irredeemably old. Defenders of the idea will inevitably make comparisons to the MP3 market, which has pretty much replaced the CD market and which manages to thrive while at the same time remaining consumer-friendly.

Detractors, on the other hand, will point out that PSP games are considerably more expensive than MP3s. When your product only costs 99 cents a pop, it's frankly difficult to be consumer-unfriendly. Add in the fact that every game is going to be sold through the Playstation Network, and you've got a situation that is ultimately going to end up sitting on the consumers' heads.

Sony has, frankly, never been one to enjoy healthy competition. There's a reason Sony's Memory Sticks cost twice the amount that SD cards do for any given memory capacity. The Playstation Network, you see, is not merely an online marketing tool. The Playstation Network is every MP3 player Sony makes, every camera Sony sells, an ever-expanding catalog of stylish digital devices that require Sony-manufactured connectors, memory cards and batteries in order to function. It's 1984, but on a consumer scale.

Of course, this alone does not put Sony in a more-sinister position that any large-scale electronics manufacturer -- exploitation is at the heart of business. Where the PSP Go is going to push things into darker territory is in the elimination of a physical product.

Games stored on physical media have height, width, weight, and cost money for the materials needed to manufacture them. Digital downloads do not. Yet the very things that make physical media more expensive to deliver also ultimately makes them cheaper for the consumer.

In a retail environment, before you purchase your game from the store, the store has already purchased it from a distributor. In practical terms, that means that every game they have sitting in the stock room, taking up physical space, is a potential dead loss for the company. The only way to turn that loss around is to sell those games to the public.

Now, it's true that when you walk into a Gamestop looking for a new game, you wont necessarily sense this urgency on the store's part in either the pricing or the promotion of the games themselves (unless you count the quiet desperation in the eyes of the clerk trying to sell you a used copy of the same game that's been licked by a dog and melted on one side with a cigarette lighter, for five dollars off the MSRP). That's because when a game's new, people WANT to buy it, and are willing to pay the full retail price point.

Over time, however, demand will drop off, and the financial losses of the games in the stock room begin to cement themselves in reality. It is at this point that the store needs to make an effort to get those games out of the stock room, with the result being reduced prices. Let those reduced-price games sit and fester for a few years, with demand constantly dropping because of the used-game market, and the games enter the phase of life known as the Bargain Bin. The end result is that, with some looking, you can find a new PS3 copy of "Bioshock" going for all of five bucks.

And somehow, life goes on.

Now, I'm not against digital distribution. Steam, Direct 2 Drive, companies like Good Old Games, they all do a brisk business that manages to frequently offer excellent deals to consumers. The issue is that digital distribution removes most of the stimuli that require them to do so. Sony, with the PSP Go, is taking that one step further -- they eliminate physical stock, they eliminate the used game market, and perhaps most important of all, they eliminate any other source from which to purchase their product.

I'm not saying that Sony is inevitably going to screw the consumer... but, let's see those Memory Stick prices drop as a good-faith effort, how about?

Thoughts?

Pretty strong overall article, and he even took it a step further than the others I've read by mentioning the limited distribution channel - a point I never considered before.  Sony has just made a big mistake trying to build hardware for a niche audience. Bad, bad, bad idea.  

So let us all now mock the PSPgo and have a hearty laugh.

as far as the psp go goes (sorry for the pun) who ever thought $249/£230 was a good price for it should just be fired ... finally (since it must be the same idiot who thought $500 was good for the playstation 3 to launch at).  the incentives for getting one at this price are just not there.

why anyone would not just get an original psp (one of the first 3 iterations) for half the price or just simply stick to what they have (since they'd have likely got one by now if they were interested) is beyond me.

making an absolute price comparison it is only $50 less than a ps3 and it's more expensive than most X360 SKUs.

on the question of digital distribution, i am a supporter and a believer, however the psp go is clearly a very bad vehicle for that

bugsonglass said:

as far as the psp go goes (sorry for the pun) who ever thought $249/£230 was a good price for it should just be fired ... finally (since it must be the same idiot who thought $500 was good for the playstation 3 to launch at).  the incentives for getting one at this price are just not there.

why anyone would not just get an original psp (one of the first 3 iterations) for half the price or just simply stick to what they have (since they'd have likely got one by now if they were interested) is beyond me.

making an absolute price comparison it is only $50 less than a ps3 and it's more expensive than most X360 SKUs.

on the question of digital distribution, i am a supporter and a believer, however the psp go is clearly a very bad vehicle for that

I believe in digital distribution too but I need to be able to burn a hard copy and there needs to be price competition. The VC is pissing me off right now charging ridiculous amounts for games that aren't worth it. And there is no promise that you own the right to play the games you purchased once your system conks out.

Another day, another article. I think that the media is slowly turning on the Go. This is from Gamecentral:

Today's review of Gran Turismo is typical of the sort of mistakes that Sony and developers continue to make on the PSP, writes David Jenkins.

It's hardly the first console to see its potential go untapped, but rarely has a manufacturer seemed to so fundamentally misjudge its appeal.

The new PSPgo is meant to be a new beginning for the format, but in reality it's another false dawn.

For those still unsure about what exactly the PSPgo is (and given the lack of marketing that's probably quite a few) it's exactly the same machine underneath as the other models.

However, it's now encased in a smaller shell with a sliding screen.

It supports Bluetooth and it's easier to connect to your TV, but the only important technical change is that it cannot run UMD games or movies.

Since you can't play any existing PSP games on it the PSPgo becomes the world's first download-only console.

Everything is stored on the 16GB of internal Flash memory and games are bought and downloaded via the PlayStation Store.

In other words it works very much like the iPhone, especially thanks to the "Minis" - a range of smaller, cheaper downloads similar to the App Store.

The problem with the PSPgo is that it all seems like too little too late.

The hardware redesign doesn't make any functional difference (there's no second analogue stick and the screen is actually smaller than before).

The range and variety of software doesn't appear to have increased at all and even the Minis seem to have defaulted to ports of existing iPhone games right from the start.

Perhaps the biggest issue with the PSPgo is its absurd price tag of £225 - almost the same as a PS3 Slim.

That might seem more tolerable if it wasn't for the fact that PSP games are so obsessed with replicating the home console experience on a portable, rather than creating their own style.

It's hard to imagine many DS games on a home console, but PSP and PS2 titles continue to be interchangeable.

When the PSPgo was announced we expected Sony to usher in a new wave of more distinctive games.

Apart from Gran Turismo though all that's on the horizon is a port of LittleBigPlanet and another Metal Gear Solid from Konami.

Whether you play them on a UMD or download them it's the games that are important and in that regard at least the PSPgo is still business as usual.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/sony-plays-down-pspgo-retail-concerns

Sony plays down PSPgo retail concerns

Interesting that sales of the 3000 have gone up. I think people might be worried about a download only machine so they are finally snapping up the older model. Maybe in the hope that UMD game prices might take a dive. Hobo pick ups?