Sony announces 'NGP' to compete against Nintendo's forthcoming 3DS - but they're both doomed to fail. Here's why
For my generation, nothing was cooler to have as a kid than a Nintendo GameBoy.
Even the original, a grey, brick-sized device with a puny black-and-white screen, was the stuff of legends. The GameBoy Pocket, its much more slender successor, was all-too trendy. Following this came the groundbreaking Gameboy Color - yes, color, imagine that! Then came the GameBoy Advance, and then my personal favourite ever, the GameBoy Advance SP, which returned from the Advance's horizontal design to the original square control pad and added a flip screen to downplay the fact that it really wasn't any smaller than previous models.
GameBoys, childhood-defining as they were, are a thing of the past. They have been long replaced by the "DS" (Dual screen), Nintendo's second generation of portable gaming, which has also undergone many subtle models: the DSi, DS Lite, etc. Personally, I tried one and hated it - gaming with a stylus is awkward and I never recognized a justified benefit of having two screens.
But the DS product line has succeeded nonetheless, perhaps less so because of its gaming capacity, and more so because it can do more just play games. The same can be said for Sony's PSP (Portable PlayStation): it can play music, surf the web, watch movies, etc.
This was a necessary evolution, because gaming-only devices are all but extinct. So few people carry around such things anymore; it seems to have been a fad for the 90s and early into last decade. But now even the PSP and DS are fading in popularity. This is because of the rise of smartphones, and more recently, tablets: phones with everything a portable gaming system has - full-powered internet access, thousands of games, etc. - in addition to apps, social media feeds, superior cameras, etc. It's the all-in-one. Nobody's going to carry around a PSP and an iPhone when they can carry around only an iPhone.
Plus, portable gaming systems aren't cheap: around $200, the same or more than even the most potent of smartphones. Sure, you need to sign a three-year contract and pay monthly, but you'd be doing that anyway. People are even dropping their landline bills and going all-out with their smartphone: who needs a PSP, a landline, and an iPhone when all you need is an iPhone? The GameBoy rocked the world because back then, smartphones were cellphones and - if a user was lucky - they could play Snake or Pong in 8-bit black-and-white. Today, it's a different story.
Gaming quality on smartphones has improved tremendously.
Think about it. Would you buy a printer, scanner, photocopier, and fax machine, or an all-in-one? The latter will save you space, time, and money. It's a no-brainer. This same concept applies to smartphones, and soon enough, tablets: they can do it all. Other devices will become more and more niche.
The most valuable gamers aren't PSP or DS gamers who buy game cartridges: the two most profitable gamers are, first, people who play app-based games like FarmVille and generate advertising revenue and purchase virtual goods with real money, and second, people who buy the big consoles - PS3 and Xbox and Wii - and buy lots of big $80 games, invest in accessories like Fit, Move, and Kinect. The portable gaming prospects are dull; if you're playing on a 3-inch screen on the fly, you probably just want to play a simpler, cheaper game on your phone. The graphics and controls are hardly any worse than a gaming-dedicated device. And if you want to indulge in a hardcore gaming experience, you'll do it on the PC or in front of a widescreen HDTV in the comfort of your living room. The market for dedicate portable gaming devices is still large. But while the smartphone market grows rapidly, its so-called competitor shrinks.
There is yet more fuel to the fire of future failure. The Nintendo 3DS, a 3-D upgrade to its latest DS model, will cost roughly $300, and the Sony NGP will cost about the same (or so experts and analysts forecast). So Sony and Nintendo are adding a staggering 50 percent to the price of devices that many already consider bordering on their maximum worth.
Of course, dedicated portable gaming will remain relevant for the foreseeable future, but will diminish from its mainstream status to a niche gadget. The technological improvements in smartphones and tablets are much more accelerated; their demand is growing rapidly worldwide; and the increasingly all-in-one capabilities are there and improving constantly. It is futile for Sony to try and catch up, let alone defeat, Apple's iPhone and the Android phones - which is essentially its goal, foolish though it is for such a veteran company.
To call this the death of the PSP or DS would be akin to overly dramatic harbingers touting the end of printed newspaper at the turn of the century. Such things do not simply vanish as if flicked on and off by a switch. They're still profitable, after all. But growth potential is stifled, the market is waning, and the competition is beyond fierce.
It's only a matter of time before the PSP and DS join the GameBoy in the grave. And as for the NGP and 3DS? Consider them DOA.
