PSP Devs Should Pony Up 99
President of development house 'Ready at Dawn' Didier Malenfant has given a short interview to GamesIndustry.biz. In the piece, he lays out his feeling that developers are to blame for the lackluster title library of Sony's handheld console. From the article: "'Everything is compromised, and it bugs the hell out of me when you hear a lot of developers saying, Well, we can't do this that way because it's a handheld game, or We can't do this because it doesn't have a second analog stick.' 'Those are all excuses,' Malenfant continued - observing that the original PSone controller didn't have any analog sticks, 'And there were great games on that.'"
PSP and Playstaion (aka PSOne) aren't the same. (Score:4, Interesting)
Plus gamers are used to completely different games and gaming experiences, I'd suspect that most people who have a PSP expect the gameplay to be similar to what they have today on the PS2.
I agree with 80% of him (Score:5, Interesting)
Contrast this with games like "Ys'" and the Japanese release on the PSP of Valkyrie Profile [gamebrink.com], both of which suffer from frequent load times. The latter also appears to have bad text and graphics, where the developer didn't take the time to remake the graphics and font for the smaller system, but just stretched out the graphics and added fuzziness to hide the edges.
Yuck.
In the latter case, it appears to just be laziness - they didn't take the time to make the game well, and now they and gamers will suffer for it.
On the other hand, I believe there are also some inherent design flaws with the PSP, mainly in the UMD system. Games that require data swap outs (like RPGs as you move from one area to the next) will suffer from load times. On a PSX system, that's fine - the CD is always spinning, because you're plugged into the wall.
On a PSP, though a constantly spinning UMD means your battery is going to vanish faster than a bottle of Bawls at a LAN party. So the game has to load, spin down, spin up, load, spin down over and over again, which gives you bad load times.
There are ways around this - better caching or compression, using a piece of the memory card (basically, you make the "save game" space at the beginning then use that to cache some data. Granted, it's not optimal, but it's an idea).
So a wagging finger of shame to developers too lazy to update the graphics in their ports, a wagging finger of shame to the developers who haven't even bothered to give us really good original games (save for maybe "Exit" - and no, I'm not including "Lumines" - it's Dr. Mario all over again), and a wagging finger to Sony for not promising on the possibility of the PSP.
Symptom of too many ports (Score:5, Interesting)
You can make a game that has a close resemblance, but thats about it.
Now, I think that one of the big reasons that the PSP may be suffering is that too many developers and publishers are porting games to that system rather then writing entirely new games. specifically for it.
The Nintendo DS does not suffer as much from this problem for two reasons. One is that most direct port type games from earlier systems have already shown up on the Gameboy Advance. The other reason is that the new interface pretty much demands new types of games.
END COMMUNICATION
The lack of gaming innovation is down to the PSP. (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, it's got a nice screen, and whilst it's bigger than that of the Gameboy SP, and a more conventional format that that of the DS, it's too small to allow full console titles to be ported to it, so from a developers point of view, it's as much of a burden as an advantage. People are expecting better graphics and use of the screen real estate, but in the industry it's seen just another platform on which to release your games, and moving away from a conventional screen size is a real pain in the arse.
As I had been expecting from well before the PSP and DS were released, we're seeing some pretty innovative ideas using the dual screens, touch screen and microphone inputs on the Nintendo DS. These are all features which can be used to enhance gameplay, and bring a whole new experience to gamers, and they're even being used to enhancing more established genres. Developers love that kind of thing. New toys, bells and whistles to play with are always going to get the creative juices flowing, especially if using them is optional. You don't hear developers crying out with joy that they've come up with a groundbreaking game idea that uses the extra half inch of screen space available on the PSP.
The PSP just isn't groundbreaking at all. It certainly does what it does well enough, and as a piece of consumer electronics, it looks stunning, but underneath it all, it's just, well, a rather uninspiring, fairly boring handheld gaming machine.
I can easily see the same thing happening once all three next-gen consoles are on sale. Sony and Microsoft will be fighting each other purely on hardware performance and the odd exclusive title, but it'll all just be first person shooters, sports and driving games. There'll have to be some pretty sever price drops to ensure that they shift the number of units they have planned. The games will probably all look stunning, but will offer very little new.
Meanwhile, Nintendo will be happily shifting the Revolution, selling plenty of downloaded legacy titles, and showing the world truly innovative games. Having a full developer's kit priced at only $2K is going to bring many more developers to the party as well. I can't wait.
Re:PSP and Playstaion (aka PSOne) aren't the same. (Score:3, Interesting)
The PSP is $100 more than the PS2, and twice the price of the DS. People who pay that kind of mony expect a hell of a lot more from the system.
A Bit Off-Topic (Score:4, Interesting)
So, why is it that GTA has done so poorly on/for the PSP?
I blame the developers for a different reason. (Score:4, Interesting)
The simple fact of the matter is that gameplay on a handheld is inherently different from gameplay on a home console. This is a known fact, has been known for years, as the gameboy has outlasted every other handheld that has entered the market. The main reason being, the other handhelds were structured just as portable home consoles, and therefore they ignored several important issues involving battery life, short learning curve and gameplay that's easy to get into and out of quickly.
People are calling PSP the King of Ports because that's all that's being made, console ports you can carry with you. And, unfortunately, that just doesn't sell a portable system, because while the system is portable, the game is not. Most of these companies have development groups within them that have worked on GBC & GBA and produced hits, some have even produced hits on the DS. If those same teams were working on the PSP, instead of teams who've only really worked with the PS2, and maybe the Xbox or GCN, you'd see better, more interesting PSP games.
But with things being the way they are, it's very unlikely. It seems as if the PSP is going to suffer the same fate the GCN suffered. It's not selling well compared to it's competition, and so it will lose developer support, meaning even fewer people will purchase it.
Re:I'm a little biased, however ... (Score:3, Interesting)
Four kinds. Believe it or not, there are people who are actually *happy* with the PSP. I have about twenty games for it right now. The PSP has its fair share of crap games (Ghost in the Shell, or Generation of Chaos, which is perhaps the most terrible game ever made) but it also has plenty of titles which are a lot of fun, like SSX, Legend of Heroes, Ys, Rengoku, Tokobot, and a few others.
That said, my wife has a DS, and haven't (yet) played a game on it that I haven't really enjoyed - way to go, Nintendo. Here's the thing, though - as much as I usually dislike the idea of "convergence" gadgets (do one thing, and do it well, please - like the DS, or GBA) it's sometimes really, really nice to have all the extra abilities. It's a hassle to put MP3s and movies onto Memory Sticks sometimes, but the extra complexity of the device is compensated for by my not having to carry multiple devices when travelling or suffering through family affairs at my mom's place.
I think Sony's problem is that they just don't know how to market the PSP. They have definitely undersold the gaming capabilities of the device in favor of pushing UMDs (which I agree are a big "f-you" to consumers from Sony) on us.
Just my $0.02, but I'm a 360 fanboy, so my opinion isn't worth much here on
Re:Huh. (Score:3, Interesting)
What pulled the Game Boy and perhaps the entire portable games industry is that Nintendo took the initiative and started to make real games for the Game Boy. Kirby stood on his own two feet (or... you know what I mean) to the extent that he even made the leap from portable to console. And where they did use a console franchise, they approached it from the angle of "Game X 2" instead of "Game X Lite," giving us games like Zelda: Link's Awakening.
I think it took stuff like that to inspire others to stop watering down their portable games as well. Konami has given us Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow, but back in the day they gave us The Castlevania Adventure, and I suspect the jump in quality wouldn't have happened if Metroid II hadn't put Konami to shame.
I suspect if the PSP is ever going to escape from the flood of "GTA Gaiden" games, they're going to have to find a Nintendo-esque company to come along and make real, immersive games for the system. Otherwise, comparisons to the Game Gear will persist.
Original Game Boy franchises continue to be successful enough to make the jump from portable to console. Something similar will have to happen to a PSP game if it's going to be a viable platform in the long term.
Re:I agree with 80% of him (Score:2, Interesting)
the Japanese release on the PSP of Valkyrie Profile
If I were SquareEnix, I'd just start selling copies of the old PSOne version of this game again. Right now it costs well over $100 for used copies on eBay, and the few available new copies sell for ~$225! I've wanted to play this game for a while, but not at these prices. And, I'm certainly not going to go out and buy a PSP just to play it.