A Nintendo Fanboy on the PSP2 (codenamed NGP)

Like many of you I stayed up very very late to watch Sony’s press conference last night/this morning. I just couldn’t go to bed with a video game unveiling of this magnitude going on. There’s something about being fed the news in bite-size pieces on Engadget while refreshing my web browser every 10 seconds for a period of 2 hours. It’s so exciting when that refresh delivers fresh news. Anyways, I’m going to assume that you have already seen the specs so I won’t get into that too much I just want to talk about how the announcement effects me as a Nintendo Fanboy.

Firstly, I must confess that I am not the type of Koopaling who only buys Nintendo products. I also own a 360 and am somewhat open to Sony products but I do give priority to top Nintendo games before I make time to play anything else. So my initial impression of the PSP2 were that it seems pretty cool. It doesn’t in any way make me like the 3ds less or wish that Nintendo was doing what Sony is doing. I think they’re both shaping up to be pretty cool products. My worry if I’m Sony is that the PSP2 will end up stealing sales from the PS3. I myself might fall into this category. I’m not overly interested in adding a PS3 to my living room with a Wii, Blu-Ray player, and 360 taking up space already, but I do want to gain some sort of access to Sony’s first party lineup. The PSP2 seems like a nice way to achieve that.

Here are some of the main caveats I have about the system. I’ll get into what’s great about it after. I think that it’s going to be expensive to produce quality games for it, it’s going to be expensive to buy games, and it’s going to be expensive to buy the system itself. My guess is that the system will be $349.99 at launch and games will be $59.99. While the two analog sticks will be great when you’re playing it might cause problems when you’re sticking the machine into your pocket. The 3ds will slide in smooth since it folds shut hiding the analog stick but the PSP2 has actual analog sticks sticking out from the device which will making pocketing the device counter-intuitive. For me this is no problem since I buy handhelds for home use. However, the large audience that these devices target value the portability. I also feel that it won’t receive many 3rd party games that actually push the hardware the way Resident Evil Revelations pushes the 3ds hardware. I believe that there will be a stark difference between the original first party Sony games and 3rd party games. And even though games like Killzone and Uncharted will look great they are likely to be much shorter then their console counterparts and still cost about the same price. The vast majority of original games on this system will be low budget downloadable games like Cut the Rope and Angry Birds. I have no idea right now how well this system will sell since it doesn’t really differentiate itself from consoles or from the Iphone. The 3ds is unique and will be success as a result.

Now onto the good. The graphics are great, it supports PSN, it supports 3g, it has a large gorgeous OLED screen, dual analog controls, and there are several key first party games in development. Everything about the hardware itself is wonderful. It remains to be seen at this point what kind of 3rd party support it will receive. So far 3rd parties are just experimenting with the system. But no doubt Solid Snake will make an appearance on the system at some point.

They say that the graphical leap between the psp2 and the 3ds is the same as the leap from psp to ds. This may be true but I don’t believe that this will matter. The fact is that you’re still going to be restricted to handheld game budgets. At the end of the day you’re probably going to end up with a more fully fleshed out game on the 3ds because of the lower development costs. On the PSP2 games that push the hardware will end up being more visual but smaller in scope and depth. The question is would you rather have a game like Final Fantasy 10 in 3D which was absolutely epic and deep or a shallow but visual experience like Final Fantasy 13?