Yay – it’s here! The next, next generation of handheld gaming, and developers are delighted, Sony stockholders couldn’t be happier, and gamers themselves couldn’t be happier either, at least for the most part…
I wasn’t one of these folks who rushed right out to grab one of the new Sony PSPs and honestly, I’m really not planning on doing so anytime in the near future, either. I say this with due confidence because, for the most part, I’m not a gamer anymore. Yes, there was a time when video games dominated my mere existence and entire weekends could go by in a flash just by plopping down two hard-earned dollars at the rental store, but I was twelve years old then and some things have changed! Namely I’ve gone and gotten myself a full-time job, a girlfriend, and a monthly rent payment…and while there are other “adult” gamers out there who have managed to balance it all, frankly there’s just not enough motivation in it for me yet.
So what is it going to take to draw myself and countless others back into the realm of mobile gaming, you ask? Well, considering that my own last system was a Nintendo Game Boy…yes, the plain, old, original Game Boy…we’ve already passed by several alternatives on the way to Sony’s PSP of this week. A handful of Game Boy upgrades to cover any color-combinations that my creative soul could possibly long for, a wanna-be, pseudo-portable version of the classic Playstation, and now this latest offering from Sony strives to give the gaming community everything that they could ever want in a portable…and maybe it does for some consumers…
…but for me, it’s really been a myriad of reasons thus far why I haven’t plunged my disposable dollar back into a little gaming on the go and those reasons are exactly what we’re going to talk about today because just playing a hunch, I’m guessing that I’m not the only person who’s thinking along these lines! I truly think that many of us who used to be gamers way back in the day might seriously reconsider jumping back on that bandwagon, if only a few important factors would be taken into consideration by the powers that be:
First and foremost, and I do think that this is a big one, I wish that the big three (or two that are participating, anyways) would realize that handheld games were always meant to be a supplement to console gaming, not a substitute, and as such, I honestly believe that they’re overstepping a large portion of their audience by trying to sell the most amazing, genuine experience that can be taken out on the road…
This, of course, stands out the most with respect to price because as it would happen, the Sony PSP will likely cost you more than you spent on your last gaming console…unless you happened to buy in right when they were first released for $300 a piece. Games, on the other hand, will run you a cool $40 – $50 a piece and a lot of them are the very same games that you’re already playing on the consoles…but new, smaller disc – new price tag. Maybe I’m just old-fashioned, but for a game that I’m only playing on the go, halve each of those numbers and you’ll be talking more along the lines of my language. If I’m shelling out fifty bucks for a title, I’d better be able to enjoy it in HD on my big screen.
I know that it just doesn’t make sense financially when the good, old business model shows just how much cash can be had by simply reselling the same games over a new platform, but I still think that you could score major points by adopting this…and thereby forcing everyone else to follow suit. Now correct me if I’m wrong, but this truly hasn’t even been done since back in the days of the TurboGrafx-16 where after only purchasing the portable itself, suddenly I could enjoy all of my existing Bonk and Keith Courage disks on the road with no extra carts to buy. Then again, it wasn’t shortly thereafter that the entire platform went and disappeared off the face of the industry, but that’s neither here nor there!
My point is that we see all sorts of adaptors that allow us to play the portable games with our regular consoles, which of course looks horrible because the graphics were made for a three inch LCD, and yet we never see them port in the other direction where it would do the most good. In fact, I would likely even be more willing to go out and spend $250 on a new portable if I knew that I could already play the library that I’ve amassed for my console system over the years, but it just seems like a waste to keep buying the same titles over and over again. I might have both an Xbox and a PS2, but you certainly won’t catch me buying Ghost Recon 2 twice, simply because it’s a slightly different experience…
…and yet again with the buying and re-buying of the same titles – are you beginning to see what my issue here is?! Sure, the screen’s only a fraction of the size of my laptop’s and I’d probably be just as likely to sit and watch a full-length feature on the PSP as I would my cell phone, but I guarantee you that I’d be a lot more willing to give it a try if you didn’t have me buying new versions of my favorite flicks for your new system. I don’t know how to break this to you, but DVDs are already pretty strong in the market – you’re not going to break that hold with a format that’s only viewable as a three-inch square!
Besides, with handhelds nearly as big as your average compact disc player anyways, there’s really no reason other than possibly a power-consumption issue that you can’t find a way to let us watch any of the thousands of DVDs that are already in circulation. Otherwise, feel free to just scrap this idea because really, I can’t imagine squinting at that tiny screen for upwards of two hours straight, anyways…
Maybe it’s just me, but it feels like with this round, developers just crammed as many neat ideas into these boxes as they could think of…without actually working out all of the bugs to ensure that usability would be smooth and fluid. A classic example of this is the wireless networking offered by most of the current generation handhelds – all offer a feature that’s kind of neat, if you can get it to work properly, but when you narrow down those specifics, some might very well argue that you’d might as well have the cables running between you at that point.
And what gets me is that this one really seems like a simple fix. All of the major cellular carriers are offering some sort of mobile web or data service these days on their existing digital networks…so why not just partner with one of them to provide a great service that frankly seems to be falling through the cracks with most conventional cell phones? The average screen on your handheld gaming device is certainly comparable to that of a PDA, so why not work out a deal to let everyone do on their portables what they haven’t been able to do on their miniscule cell phones?! It almost seems too easy!
I know that I already touched on this with point #1, but I really don’t think that I can stress it enough – the portable might very well be a great addition to my gaming arsenal, but hands down, it’s still not going to replace the experience of sitting down with all of the friends around the TV for a competitive game of Super Smash Bros. or even blasting each other out of the water from across the country via Xbox Live. You don’t have to sell it to me as a complete gaming experience – just mention that I can play some of my favorite games in a new and interesting way, and you can have my hard-earned dollar just like before! But as for reselling me the very same games that I already own on discs half the size … it’s not going to be that easy…
I’m curious to know just how many of you feel the same way, so drop me a line if you’ve got some comments to share and I’ll do my best to post the best of them online for all to consider. There may very well still be room out there in the gaming community for the likes of us “old school players,” but we’re not just going to take whatever’s thrown at us. In the meantime, don’t be surprised if you catch me at the bus stop with a classic Game Boy in hand, enjoying a reminiscent walk through The Legend of Zelda or perhaps if I’m up for a challenge, a rousing game of Tetris on level nine. Whenever you’ve got something better for me to try, you just let me know…
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