PSP needs a AAA title, says Sony

[wraggster]

via cvg (http://computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=165221)

PSP sales are declining faster than Sony had anticipated which is being put down to the overwhelming success of the DS and the lack of a defining title on the console.

Sony expected to sell 12 million units financial year starting April 2006. These estimates have now been dropped to nine million.

Software is considered a big part of the problem with the handheld. "Clearly on the software side, any real killer title will galvanize the sales," re-assures Robert Wiesenthal, chief financial officer of Sony Corporation of America.

But he goes on to admit: "there have been a number of titles that have been terrific, but not the one title that defines the product."

Hiroshi Kamide, director of the research department at KBC Securities Japan, also cites software as the key problem for Sony. "If you look at the availability of software, there are a lot of games for the PSP but are not particularly successful ... You don't see any million-seller games for the PSP but you do hear about them for the Nintendo DS.

"The big problem is that while it's a wonderful-looking machine with a great display, the games are not so different from those you play at home on the PlayStation 2. Most of the software is knock-offs of PlayStation 2 titles and that won't do Sony any favours," he concludes.

[parkermauney]

I haven't found a game worth playing since loco roco.

[Classic80s]

I don't like loco roco.

[LAMPRO]

i run throo games faster than a fat kid wit cake.. one afta tha otha..

[Tesseract]

Yeah... Loco Roco was the first game I was REALLY excited about for the PSP. Crush more recently. I agree that the PSP REALLY needs a 'killer app', though.

Maybe something unprecedented like.... official homebrew support ;)

[parkermauney]

Haha, yeah. I really can't wait for the lr sequel.

[rockiecxh]

MHP2 is not bad.

[Joe88]

GoW

[masterpaul]

Now they noticed... they need an AAA title that isn't a port or that wont be ported.

[Buddy4point0]

goW will bring sales up, but what would really bring up sales is a mmorpg for psp.

[White_Hawk_UK]

Anyone else get the feeling that Sony went about this whole thing half-cocked? As much as I love my PSPs, and the games I play on them, there's still this sort of... unfinished/unsupported feel to the console.

If they'd put as much energy into their little baby from the start, and perhaps given serious consideration to sensibly officiating the homebrew scene, they'd probably be much happier with the way things worked out for them.

[Baboon]

Gran Turismo for the psp would have sold the machine... its sad that this doesnt seem to be happening now though. :(

I've got CPS2 and PSPUAE on my PSP so who cares about anything else! lol

[sn8f1st]

Its all about MHP2ND.

If i remember right that it sold over 1million units in the first week of launch and is still No 1 in the PSP charts in Japan.

I visited Tokyo and i saw more people playing PSP's on the trains and about town than DS's. Actually I can not remember seeing any one play a DS over there. Oh and every person who was playing a PSP was playing MHP2ND.

MHP2ND would be more appeling to people outside of Japan if the intital stages of the game progressed faster. TBH i find the game hard, although i know there are a lot of people who would disagree.

I still think Loco Roco, MHP are the 2 best titles on the system. Can't wait for MHP2ND to come out in europe in september.

I love my PSP, since i got my PS3 i been loving it even more (I'll be proper happy when i can stream a DVD thru remote play)

[White_Hawk_UK]

ARGH! It always infuriates me when I have to google something like "MHP2ND"...

Nice to hear things are going well for PSP in Japan.

My one frustration at the moment is that most of my friends who had PSPs have sold them, or given them away, and nobody else I meet (say, someone on a train) has both a PSP, and a copy of the same game for adhoc play.

In an ideal world, I'd be randomly trashing fellow passengers in Wipeout every morning, or winning their Carrera 4S in a Most Wanted challenge...

...but, alas, I find myself wandering the lonely road of the PSP alone most journeys.

[Accordion]

maybe im missing something, but i think there are plenty of great games for psp
MGS: PO
MGA
MGA2
Monster Hunter
VP: lenneth
Gitaroo man
me and my katamari
SOCOM
pursuit force
Wipeout
Daxter
Ratchet
mercury

some are ports and direct continuations of established games, but the production quality is incredible, and most [minus loading times] are more than suitable for short periods of play.

[Gold Line]

all psp games suck :mad:
the only thing the psp is good for is homebrew

[01cooperl]

I don't understand these articles, they must be written by people who favour the DS. I look at the psp titles and then the DS. The best ones for the DS are Mario kart DS, Super Mario DS etc. They are mostly polished ports or squeals of games the were on the Nintendo 64! Especially mario DS, add more stars to get and more characters and then go and slate the PSP for PS2 ports?! At most the GTA games are the biggest ports but at least the whole game bar the map, cars and scenery have changed.

It just proves how the media drives the public opinion.

[Safari Al]

Sony really needs to produce a line of games like they did for ps2 (ex:GTA) that'd help them a lot.

[BloodLust8]

I like the psp games and there is a pretty good selection of them out there and whats best is that there is a bunch of unique titles which are coming out for it.

Regarding the DS, well. The difference is riding a beatle compared to a Lamborghini. Both of them get you where u want to go but the difference is power and style and the worst part of DS is that most of the games are GBA game remade and guess what. The psp can play GBA games.

The main reason these days for the use of my psp is playing DivX on the tube and in a month or two I'll play games and then in a month or two I'll read pdf books etc.... the point is. When I get bored of a certain feature gets boring there is so many other aspect of the psp I can goto.

[Shadowblind]

They need to make a freakin Kingdom Hearts game for it, Dangit!

[Veskgar]

Its good that people are finally taking notice. My opinions on this come from my history with the PSP. Never mind homebrew, I was in line at a Best Buy the morning of the PSP's launch to be one of the first to get one. I've played or at least tried out most commercial PSP games. Unfortunately, I've come to think that the UMD is an inconvenience and gets in the way of a lot of games enjoyment with loading times. Now this could be resolved with a faster UMD optical drive but there are some really stellar games for the PSP that have little or no load times when playing on UMD so there should be no excuse for developers.

Also, what makes the DS Lite so special is that it is so intuitive. And more than that, its capabilities are utilized smartly in most games. With the microphone, WiFi, touch screen, rumble pak, headset, etc. etc.

I scratch my head at how the DS Lite, a less powerful handheld device can have so many more games use "infrastructure" WiFi. Not just adhoc like most PSP games. Also, the DS Lite has a few games that you can actually use a headset on to talk to other people. And the PSP, which is more powerful and functional as an "online" WiFi device has what? Like 2 games that use the headset? That is an insult.

I agree with an earlier post saying that an MMORPG type game could be a killer-app for the PSP. Infrastructure WiFi should be included on all or most PSP games. Better yet, SONY should have created its own PSP WiFi network with friend codes or gamer tags by now. I know its copying Nintendo/Microsoft but its better than nothing. And what adds insult to injury is that a lot of games that offer their own infrastructure networking don't even do it that well. You might as well be playing against a computer AI opponent because you can't communicate via text or voice. Instead we get ready-made 2 or 3 word phrases like "Are you ready" or some silly stuff like that.

If this long post is any indication, this is probably the biggest gripe I have with the PSP and I get really heated when trying to express my disappointment over it.

The bottom line is that with the prevalence of broadband and the ease of setting up a wireless router or wifi adapter, not to mention hotspots (PSP now has free T-mobile hotspot access) games should utilize that. How great it would be to walk into a Starbucks and see 3 or 4 people on a PSP in some incredibly addictive online game.

All the things most people want with a PSP and commercial games especially is possible. However, unlike Nintendo, SONY doesn't seem to want to give us the freedom of a more intuitive and personalized gaming experience. And that is one of the biggest failures of the PSP.

Its not too late for the PSP but if the mad sales of the DS Lite is any clue to the future, SONY better act fast. And if they are somehow hoping a new revised "slim" PSP might turn things around, it won't. The games matter first and foremost. And what's even worse is if SONY intends to offer new features for games that will ONLY work on a new PSP. That will piss off and probably be the final straw for many PSP owners. I am not even finished with my rant but this has gotten long enough and I think I made a few good points that other people can relate to.

And in closing, I wish the most anticipated handheld game for me was a PSP game but its not. Its A DS game. The Legend of Zelda - Phantom Hourglass...

But look on the bright side PSP owners. Surf's Up & Shrek the Third came out for the PSP this week. Yipee! :-)


Now they noticed... they need an AAA title that isn't a port or that wont be ported.

Exactly. The PSP is so great but lacks games that REALLY stand out. Now there are some really great games for the PSP. And those games would not work on the DS Lite, but still the PSP lacks games that make everyone want one.


Anyone else get the feeling that Sony went about this whole thing half-cocked? As much as I love my PSPs, and the games I play on them, there's still this sort of... unfinished/unsupported feel to the console.

That quote sums it up nicely also. It is clear the PSP was rushed to market but 2 1/2 years later and not seeing many genre defining killer app games makes me really worried.

[zonnikku]

DJ Max Portable is the AAA game, actually.

I've played that game more than every other PSP game I own.

Too bad it's not Japanese, or perhaps they would have realized how good it is. :|
I'm actually a bit surprised not a single person has even mentioned the game... thought it would be somewhat popular by now.

DJ Max Portable might be a port of a Korean PC MMO, but the notecharts along with other features have been made to be portable (including the sweet OST mode), and it never gets old.

Honestly, I wouldn't care if they kept going and made another one after DJ Max Portable 2.
I'd easily go and buy it.

[Sharkey]

If they would get Bethesda to release TES4 Oblivion Travels I'm sure alot of people would buy one just for that game. If I didn't already have a couple I would. It would help sales dramatically also.

[Basil Zero]

Not yet, but will in future:

FFVII Crisis Core
God of War Chains of Olympus

[Shadowblind]

FFVII Crisis Core
God of War Chains of Olympus

I dont care too much for the game with the horrible battle system, but Chains of Olympus is gonna ROCK!

[Solidsnake3000]

man i see were u guys are going but your right sony needs an mmorpg like i stated in another post if pokemon was on psp and u can interact with other players using a headset and all it would make alot of money plus all games should have infrastructure imagine playing dbz against some one u dont know it would be fun ass hell or if harvest moon was a mmorpg you can have a farm next to ur best freind orsomething iam just throwing things out but if psp had an infrastructure for its games people would be rushing to the stores to buy the games and psp and forget all about the ds

[mike_jmg]

Three words: Devil May Cry (i now, port, not killer game, so what I would love to have it on PSP)

I Think the new God of War would be a start, also I´m waiting for Dead Head Fred, Disgaea portable, Naruto (don´t remember the complete name LOL), Crazy Taxi Fare Wars.

Also Veskgar has a very good point, playing against other players over the internet it´s the killer feature they need. It would be the best thing on earth for me to kick anyone´s butt on Tekken DR over the internet, in fact I thought this feature was on the game but all they gave me was stupid Ad-Hoc and I´ve been only able to fight against the computer (Not nearly as fun as it would be playing against someone else)

Almost no game has that feature, A friend of mine has Online Chess Kingdoms and He´s like all day playing chess online against other players (little freaky though, lol)

So yeah if sony wants a killer move that´s it, some sort of online gaming, better yet if it is on Tekken

[jmendes]

I dont get these people who say GoW is gonna be THE psp game. The thing isnt even finished yet, how the hell do they know its gonna be that great for sure?
the psp really needs games that are NOT ps2 ports, that´s all.

[Solidsnake3000]

they need a game thats like .hack but not really i mean it wont look like anyone from .hack but its an mmorpg u make ur own character with like i million designs to choose from and u pick ur class and u go around fightin talking with the headsets or osmethin generally it would be like .hack but way different does anyone agree?

[Ultima Chocochu]

They need something new, not re-done
If they're just putting out games that have already been released for PS2 then it's stupid
BECAUSE
You notice a HUGE difference in how it handles, and when I say re-done, I mean like GTALCS done(which I love that game though XD)
They need something like Nintendo has Pokemon for the handheld.

[parkermauney]

They need a video game that represents sony. Kind of like mario/link for nintendo, sonic for sega, etc.

[Milleniumas]

Shit I have played more with my Game Boy Color in the past then with PSP now (which is basicly x100 better? ). I wrilly want to play some infrastructure games(so that's why I play now killzone). Loco Roco was the best PSP game! (I would gave MGS:PO the best place, but whitout the voice acting it's not the same, when you have to read all the text by yourself)

[mike_jmg]

Ultima Chocochu
You say GTA LCS it´s re-done

It is exactly like nintendo with all the mario kart games there is one for snes, one for 64, one for gba, one for DS, not surprisingly there will be one for wii

Maybe the thing is that most of us, come from the nintendo era and we like these games, why else do we need snes, gba and n64 emulators on the psp?

I like Gta Lcs too, it´s like the best gta ever
So i don´t get it why is re-done = bad

I do agree on the pokemon thing, pokemon games are really adictive, when i was younger I was fan of the series and i loved the Idea of having my own pokemon and train them (all that shit). But what nintendo did, was that you could only do all this on a gameboy, I was hoping they would release something like that for the N64 but it never happened, so i got a gameboy and a pokemon game.

The catch is that sony needs some killer game like pokemon and just put it on psp and nothing else, no ps2 or ps3 port like they did with GTA LCS and VCS, also what they´re planning to do with Tekken DR

[Welshboy]

I've got quite a few games for my psp......including all the GTA's, but the game I enjoyed the most (once i bought an analog add-onn for my psp) was street fighter alpha 3. I hated beat em ups before but i played it religiously....in fact I still do. I think its this unique selling point that allows gamers to get stuck in and "give a chance" to games that normally they would not touch that makes it, after all i find that most DS games are childish and bore me after 10 minutes. Mario Kart ds was not to distant from the snes version and i found that i could nail races in an instant which really annoyed me. A game on the PSP is always a new challenge which i really appreciate. I thoroughly enjoyed each GTA even though they were the same cities because they were completely different story lines, not the same races over and over again like in Mario Kart.

[Ultima Chocochu]

They need a video game that represents sony. Kind of like mario/link for nintendo, sonic for sega, etc.

Sony's never really had that
When they sort of had, they left Sony after awhile
(Spyro/Crash are examples)
At the moment I'd say Ratchet and Clank, and Jak are slightly PlayStation icons
Just PlayStation USED to have sooo many exclusives it used to not matter
I also don't think Sony wants to make another Mario, meaning I don't think Sony want's a single character to represent it like every other console has.

[Broadus]

Y'know, Sony makes bad PSP sales because no new PSP plays homebrew and they're all very anti-homebrew, so people that want to play homebrew must get an old PSP (as in not buy a new one, so that Sony gets no money), and PSPs capable of homebrew are also capable of pirating PSP games, so nobody wants to spend money on making a good game if it's just going to get pirated. Basically, Sony's not making money from PSP sales and nobody's making any money from game sales.

I can't be the only person who knows all that.

Also, ports aren't bad. It's just that the only games that get ports are games that aren't very fun anymore, weren't very fun when they were new and original, or if it's a port of a good game, the port is skewered to such a level that it's no longer good.

[Lodis]

Sony had a really good opportunity to create a ''killer game'' with Metal Gear Solid. Instead they created something that could have been so much better. The controls were poor, the camera angels sucked, the AI were dumb and everyone knew it wasn't a real Metal Gear Solid game.

I think the problem is if they did create a ''real'' Metal Gear Solid game then it would just be like a port of the PS1 version so what they need is a totally original title I guess.

Having said all of that, what I am looking forward to most on my Psp is a full speed N64 emulator.

[grin.ch]

JUST RELEASE GRAN TURISMO ALREADY!!!!! That was supposed to be a damn launch title!

[hd_]

Lots of good and bad points have been made, this is my opinion:

The PSP does have good games, I do enjoy playing several PSP games, and I think that if you take out the big titles from the DS (zelda, pokemon and possibly others)- the PSP simply owns the DS. But the DS does have the zelda and pokemon games, people love zelda and pokemon, so much so that they would buy the console simply for those games. There are no PSP games that shine like that, and that is why the PSP can't compete against the DS at this point in time.

No, MGS, SOCOM, Daxter, Ratchet etc. do not make you want to go out and buy the console- especially if you already own the games for PS2 (even though they aren't ports). Monster hunter might be a game like that, but no online.. STUPID!

Sony games just don't have the same atmosphere that nintendo games have. They are more single player orientated than multiplayer orientated- there just isn't nearly as much support for multiplayer in sony games. Even if every game had multiplayer support, my opinion would be the same. This is because the multiplayer is usually just tacked on to the game, and not a core feature, or fully thought through and such.


Beyond this point is purely rant- however if you are Sony, please read on:

The only way Sony can recover from this point is if they pull a donkey out of the hat. They need something big, already popular (eg: Naruto) and they need it to be the best thing ever. So if they could buy the rights to Naruto, or if they make their own killer series,eg:
Imagine, shinobida but naruto style and more story and stats based system, wide land navigation like GTA- but to make sure that the game isn't just a lame repeat of other Naruto games, and so that they can do a similar release date in America and Japan, they could make it so that it doesn't focus on the current main characters of Naruto, including Naruto himself, and just make up another story in the Naruto world {drool}.

I even have this awesome idea (in my opinion :P) where you could be a ninja from a clan of ninjas who can't use and taijutsu (melee combat), but are especially skilled at summoning ninjutsu. You can see where I am going with this- you could have a ninja monster raising game, where you can 'realistically' (in accordance to the rules and regulations of magical realms) store monsters and call on them for battle or whichever purposes. Pokemon does this in like every iteration of their game, so don't say 'that's stupid'- you could just have this story set several years after the events of Naruto (exactly like in Yu-Gi-Oh GX actually).



Wow, I went off track their, but damnit- Sony, level 5, level 100 or whoever takes care of the super Sony games, if you are out there, go and make this game! PSP ONLY YOU MORONS >.< ONLINE BATTLES, DON'T BE STINGY.

edit:
Oh great, the xbox360 is getting Naruto: Rise of a Ninja, and it looks awesome. Oh well, it wouldn't have worked out so well using naruto anyway since it is already on multiple platforms. Sony needs to make something cool whose home is PSP and maybe, just maybe will go on vacation to the land of PS3- but always remaining on PSP#.

[HumanIce]

I haven't found a game worth playing since loco roco.
should I go and buy that game? since I loved Tekken DR, and played MGS PO & tomb rider legends to end

[spankymcfister]

I haven't found a game worth playing since loco roco.

EXIT is good
WTF is good
CRUSH is good.

[xg917]

They need to make a freakin Kingdom Hearts game for it, Dangit!

DUDEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
DEFINATELYYY!!!!!! I WISH THAT WOULD HAPPEN.

and wtf happened to gran turismo???? wasnt that like the first game that was supposed to come out with the PSP??