An Interesting Read

An editor on 4 Color Rebellion has recently acquired a PSP console, and has presented his views in an article. It does seem a LITTLE biased, but a first hand view on the consoles nevertheless.

A couple weeks ago a golden opportunity presented itself, my friend (tired of his PSP simply sitting in its sock for months on end) was willing to sell me his PSP. The price was right, I had the money, and soon a PSP was in my hands.

There really is nothing like that new hardware feeling. It great just to have something new and different in your hands to play with, it always is. I’ve been playing with the thing for the past couple of months and have about 5 games for it.

The PSP can do a lot of things, and it does most of them well. Game, music, movies. All very easy to set up and all very easy on the eyes.

The PSP is truly the “next generation” of handheld gaming. If Nintendo ever released a successor to the GBA line… it would probably be a cheaper cartridge based PSP with no music or movie capabilities. But that’s just it, it’s more of the same.

When I play my PSP in public, the people who notice and hover over me are gamers. Guys, typically 18-24. The PSP is the magnum opus for this crowd. It plays Madden. It’s got awesome graphics. It looks sleek as hell, yet familiar. To the girl sitting across the aisle from me on the bus, I’m just another guy playing a “GameBoy”.

When I pull out my DS and pull out my stylus… a more diverse crowd reacts. Women, my parents, kids, and gamers. The DS is different, its odd, and it draws positive reactions from a breadth of people. People who normally don’t play games are much more open to learning how to draw clouds to help baby Mario to the ground then learning how to make this hovercraft in Wipeout move without hitting a wall.

Its not that Wipeout isn’t amazing… it is. It’s that it’s typical. And believe or not typical gaming has become a niche thing. As big as the numbers are, as huge as the sales are, gaming is not yet as ubiquitous as movies or television. The DS makes steps to change that, the PSP is stuck firmly in its roots.

This difference applies 100 fold to the Revolution. When someone sees the latest Xbox 360 kiosk in a mall 2 years from now they’ll say to themselves “Wow. Those graphics are amazing. Videogames are certainly getting realistic.” When they see a Revolution demo being played they will be intrigued and perhaps compelled to give the gizmo a shot. Whether or not they come away with a Revolution in tow is another matter for another day. The point is that people will be more willing to at least TRY it.

The PSP is strange to non-gamers because its a videogame. Nothing will change that, and nothing (not even its beauty) will make you buy a PSP if you’re a non-gamer. The DS is strange because its something different. It is that risk, that oddity that makes the DS (and by extension the Revolution) accessible to a wider audience.

Nintendo has effectively innovated the PSP into obscurity. Does this mean that I’m unhappy with my PSP? Absolutely not… the games I’ve bought thus far for it are great, and there looks to be some really compelling software coming out for it. But I am a gamer, and any system that has at least a couple years in it is going to have some great compelling software coming out for it. Not everyone is a gamer, and that makes the PSP an amazing system that was limited to a specific market from the start. Nintendo has indeed changed the game.

So basically, he prefers a DS over the PSP, but still enjoys playing with the PSP for it's better graphics and multimedia capabilities. He prefers the DS because of its ability to attract other audiences' (non gamers') attention. He also believes the Revolution will have the same effect, non gamers may not exactly be pleased with the console, but they would at least give the games a TRY, while the Xbox 360 will only be played by the traditional hardcore gamer.

It is interesting to think someone would get confused by a Game Boy and PSP, I guess some non gamers can't really tell the difference (lol).



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