Sincere Sony spills PSPgo regrets

Sony has candidly admitted that it got PSPgo wrong. No ifs, no buts.

According to SCE Worldwide studios boss Shuhei Yoshida, the platform holder has learnt from its catalogue of mistakes with the ill-fated digital-only console - and NGP is reaping all the benefits.

Speaking to OPM's Leon Hurley, reporting for CVG, a bold Yoshida admitted: "I could spend 30 minutes talking about what was wrong with PSPgo".

The console's launch in November 2009 was met with respectable reviews, but the price - just $50 less than the PS3 at the time - was widely criticised. The system struggled to sell, despite a relaunch last May that saw the hardware bundled with 10 free games in the UK.


Reports emerged in April this year that production of the device had ceased in Japan.

"There are lots of lessons we learned from the PSPgo," Yoshida told us. "Definitely we didn't do something right with [it]. So there are lots of things like the hardware didn't have the compatibility with the UMD library and not all the PSP games were sold on the PSN store.

"Hardware wise we made it our highest priority to make it small and portable but that's not what people really wanted. Because when we made it too small the screen was smaller, the buttons were thinner. It's kind of difficult, cramped into a smaller body.

"That's one of the things we learned when making the decision about large we want the screen for NGP. The five inch OLED screen and the size of the body meant we can fit the real analogue sticks."

Yoshida added that Sony was "not trying to replace smartphones" with NGP.

"We cannot make calls on NGP," he commented. "So we have to provide enough reason why, in addition to smartphone, they would want to purchase something else.

"Another analogy is that these days smartphones have pretty good camera, but they can also use an SLR and when they see the kind of pictures they can take with larger, more expensive devices they still prepared to spend the money to buy them. So it's all about what unique things you are doing with NGP."

NGP is due for launch in at least one global territory in the fourth quarter of this year. It's looking increasingly likely that the hardware will carry the name 'PS Vita'.

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