Harrison On PSP Strategy: We Haven't Yet Delivered

via kotaku

Back when the PSP launched, most thought it was gonna kill Nintendo's chunky DS. It didn't, and somewhere along the line, things went kaput. But, what exactly? Sony made a super slick product. Sony's Phil Harrison tells MTV:

Our achievement has been to deliver console-quality gaming in the palm of your hand. But that could also be considered a missed opportunity — that we have yet to really deliver PSP games that speak with their own voice and stand for what the machine can do on its own. There are, however, some great indications of that coming through. Have you seen the latest Metal Gear Solid game?

That must be the coolest thing Phil Harrison has said. Ever.

MGS:PO is one sick game. Since I got that, I have actually played my PSP for more than 20 minutes at a clip. I seriously hope they keep coming out with good titles.

love portable ops but hate the name harrison. a kid in my school is named harrison. god i hate him

Metal Gear Solid Portable Ops is the beginning of PSP's comeback imo

You need to be doing well and then doing poorly to make a comeback. Not just doing poorly.

Harrison knows what hes talking about. PSP games are nothing special except for a handful of titles. The PSP needs to find its niche like the psx did.

They need more Rpg's and good ones. They got actions games down pack to me. I think Crisis core will help.

agreed, rpg's are definately one of the best (if not the best) form of handheld gaming, they are my favorite anyways...

some good rpg's, and portable ops 2 (which i believe was already confirmed) should make for a fantastic set of games. If im not mistaken i saw a few rpgs for the psp that look promising.

I thought that ~PSP~ would kick some DS ass... but that didnt happen

Mgs:po has really annoying controls, the playstation mgs fixed camera would've worked better,
its too hard to control the camera as well as moving without 2 analog sticks

has anyone found a decent way of controlling it?

It's time the PSP had some more new games from scratch and not just ones from ports. That would be so much better if it did.

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Originally Posted by YKB

It's time the PSP had some more new games from scratch and not just ones from ports. That would be so much better if it did.

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I like what Namco did with Tekken Dark Ressurection. Sure, it wasn't an original game in that it had already appeared in arcades but this was the first home version of it... one hell of a technical feat. Not only that, but that added a hell of a lot of features and Tekken is perfectly suited for the PSP.

Without a doubt the best PSP game I own... at least until my imported copy of MGS:PO arrives, then we'll have to see. Tekken and MGS are my two favourite game series of all time. It's great to know that their PSP games are just as good as the others.

Screw lazy developers like EA.

If that's the coolest thing this Harrison fellow has ever said, he must not be a very cool guy. Saying "PSP games are not so great! But Portable Ops is somehow revolutionary!" Y'know, ANYONE could say crap like that.
I didn't like Portable Ops any more than I like most other PSP games. Now, that's just me. Don't get me wrong. I'm sure everyone else thinks it has to be the best thing since slavery was abolished, but it's most definitely not the first game on the PSP to actually be good.
For instance, NOBODY has paid any attention to the fact that Medal of Honor: Heroes has the best online gameplay (assuming you like shooters even slightly) a portable system has ever seen. What other portable game on any system has support for flawless thirty-two-man multiplayer?
Though Heroes has astonishing online capabilities, along with SOCOM Fireteam Bravo (only sixteen players but still awesome), I haven't seen any games for the PSP that go all-out in the department of single player, aside from Grand Theft Auto.
When I say "all-out", I mean that if you played an "all-out" game on an in-home console (ignore the graphics department), you wouldn't say, "This is crap." Unless you were stupid or were playing a genre you don't even like.
"All-out" should make you say, "I would sit in my house with no portability whatsoever just to play this game."
I only play most of my PSP games because they're portable. Once I get home, I have a PC and a PS2, so I don't bother with the PSP because I have much better stationary games in my house.
Portable Ops is all right, but I don't think it could be considered "all-out" because of various reasons. For one, it's utterly lacking in spoken dialogue except for in the cutscenes which are just moving pictures. When I played PO, I had been expecting something more professional like on Metal Gear Solid 2 in the whole storytelling department. The utter cheapness made me disappointed. That, and I couldn't stand those controls. And there was never anything to hide behind except walls. Okay, I'm not here to give out reviews.
My point is, had I been playing Portable Ops on my PS2 or PC, I would've returned it to the store if it had cost me more than a "bargain bin" price, because I already own Metal Gear Solid 2 for the PC, which is a million times better (not taking graphics into consideration, obviously). Same goes for SOCOM Fireteam Bravo's single player, which only gave the player one teammate even though the console versions give the player three teammates, and Star Wars Battlefront 2, which was a cut-up abomination of its PC/console counter-parts. Though they're fine portable games, they have much better versions on bigger systems. But, bigger systems don't fit into your pocket, and that's what makes the crappy portable games worth playing at all.
Don't get limited to ports and sequels, however. Unique games fall into various genres, and are thus in the same boat as the portable sequels/ports with the whole "This game is kind of good but there are similar games that are much better" deal.
I mean, people go on and on about "The PSP doesn't have any unique games and that's why nobody likes it." That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. The PSP has plenty of its own games, along with the ports and sequels. However, they all just suck. Most ports are crapped down dramatically in one way or another, sequels never fully live up to the name of a series, and unique titles suck just as much as the rest of them, except they suck times two because they don't get any fanboy points.
Not many game developers take the PSP seriously as a console. They treat it like older consoles have always been treated. You might get some loveable games, and some might just be extremely awesome, but they're impossibly outweighed by hundreds of crappy, half-assed titles made by game developers who could give less of a crap about the quality of a game.
"The UMD holds 1.5 gigabytes, but I'm going to use 300 megabytes and say that I couldn't include spoken dialogue in the game because the UMD couldn't hold it all! Even though I'm really just lazy!"

It's a bit disapointing that MGS : PO didn't include all voice dialog sounds. When I was playing MGS2 lots of times I was playing not just for game, but for the feelings that you are watching a FILM when you play MGS2. Lots of dialogs and conversation made MGS a well good game. If MGS4 comes out for xBox360 I would by it for sure.

Ow come on Harrison..... you have to accept the fact that to only way to get more from the market to make a way to lower the price of the PSP. The DS sells very well not just because of the games but also of the price. You know this we know this. If you can make the price of the PSP lower I am sure alot of people will buy it and when you lower the price of the UMD you get more sales and less piracy.

To little and to late to change anything now with 1 game...

Even if the game companies haven't really delivered on the PSP, the homebrew community totally made up for it. The fact that I have NeoGeo, CPS1 and 2 along with a plethora of other emulators that run and play extremely well, not to mention all the homebrew games that are out, make the PSP much better than the DS in my opinion