Videogame Portable Wars: Nintendo DS VS Sony PSP

PSP is doing better than all the current consoles:

35.95M



They’re basically just surviving off the popularity of PS3 and PS2. As someone said, they’re just porting crappier versions.




DS is doing twice as good:

74.90M


So I consider PSP an intelligent business move for Sony, but it is directly connected to the success of PS2 and PS3. If Sony drops in the console race, the PSP will follow suit.

It’s actually similar to the Game Gear, which was dependent on the success of the Genesis. I think Sega may have innovated slightly more than Sony is though.



Meanwhile on the DS, Nintendo is innovating like crazy with the pen technology and the dual screen. They are also repackaging all their old 2D titles (that’s the beauty of Nintendo’s model: with each new system they resell every game they’ve ever made), they are really selling the value of their wireless connection (people are going crazy over it), they are innovating on the casual games front (jaw-dropping sales on Nintendogs, Brain Age, etc.), and they are listening very well to what consumers want (a Peach platform game, Mario and Luigi game, Donkey Kong, lots of Pokemon stuff, etc.). Plus the portable market seems to be even more focused on price point than the console market. And Nintendo always wins with the price point.




So Nintendo knows exactly what they’re doing in the portable market. I think we should avoid it and port our games to the other handhelds. If we can’t beat Nintendo on the console front, we have no prayer on the portable front. Nintendo has owned it since the Game & Watch days. The best we could do is emulate the PSP and make a few bucks porting crappier versions of our games to a portable system. I doubt we’d even have as much success as the PSP though, because they’re success is tied to the PS2, and we haven’t had anything on the console front that’s as successful as PS2.



- TAE