Thursday, March 31, 2005

Nintendo is smart...

Pundits are sounding the death knell for Nintendo on the introduction of the PSP. I think they underestimate Nintendo. If you want to understand how they operate, read the book :

Game Over : How Nintendo Zapped an American Industry, Captured Your Dollars, and EnslavedYour Children
by DAVID SHEFF


Read the section in the book about their response to MGM when threatened with a lawsuit over Donkey Kong. Their laywer flies across the country to tell the MGM president that they wouldn't settle. In person. The case never made it to trial; it was thrown out by the judge

Look at the GameBoy, the most popular handheld gaming system ever. Their newest system, the DS, will play all your old (and inexpensive to buy) GameBoy Advance titles, plus the new titles. The DS has two slots, a GBA slot and a DS slot.

The DS comes in a clamshell configuration, so the screen is protected from incidental damage. No such protection with the PSP.

PSP...Entertainment without boundaries?

I just went to the Sony website to get a link to the PSP page for a link, and discovered the slogan for the PSP :

Entertainment Without Boundaries

????

The PSP looks like something designed by a company with dueling hardware and entertainment divisions. It's as locked down as any media device on the market.

The PSP :
- is too expensive
- is too easy to break
- is too big to carry everywhere
- is crippled with proprietary UMD media
- requires an expensive memory stick
- games cost fifty dollars with no budget titles
- has no backwardly compatible media

If I want to get in some recreational video, I'll do it on my Nokia 3650. I can pull it out unobtrusively.

If you want a Nintendo solution, wait for the Nintendo branded $50 game cart that will play MPEG-4 files from a Secure Digital memory card. A movie theatre in your pocket.

If you've read this and still want a PSP, they have plenty of them at the store.

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