Since purchasing my PSP early this (now past) summer I have noticed something about nearly all of the games I own. Most of them are simply console experiences shrunk to fit on a PSP screen. The play style, save structure, and overall experience is exactly what you might find on your PS2. While this sounds fantastic, it is quite clearly the biggest failure of the PSP.
Arguably the most important role of any portable game system is providing a portable game experience. This may sound obvious, but it is pretty clear Sony wasn't considering this when they developed the PSP. The games they promote and encourage, such as God of War: Chains of Olympus which came as a pack-in with my PSP is by no means a portable game. It doesn't allow for quick and easy saves and doesn't give me the ability to play it in short bursts and pick it up and play it again later. This problem can even be extrapolated to describe the PSP hardware itself.
The PSP hardware is disc-based thus effectively ruining any sort of battery life the system might have and only allowing for somewhere around four hours of continuous play. Furthermore, just getting the system started and into an actual game takes entirely too long. After two (or more) minutes the game is finally available for play.
The DS suffers from none of these issues. Most games are designed to be highly portable, cartridges ensure little-to-no loading time, and battery life is phenomenal. Just these factors alone ensure that if you want to have a game system with you to play outside of your home, the DS is the one you are choosing.
PSPs are technologically fantastic machines that do some really great stuff, especially when paired with the PS3, hell even a lot of the games on the system are quite good, but it utterly fails at doing what it is supposed to do; be a portable gaming machine.
Really that is all I can think of now but the biggest factor is the amazing variety and depth the system has for gamers of all kinds.
In terms of game quantity and quality, the Nintendo DS has the best software library of any handheld, ever.
In terms of game quantity and quality, the Nintendo DS has the best software library of any handheld, ever.
Honestly, I think "handheld" should be changed to "system" at this point...
In terms of game quantity and quality, the Nintendo DS has the best software library of any handheld, ever.
Honestly, I think "handheld" should be changed to "system" at this point...
You know, I would have to agree with you. It is still stunning to me that DS has hardly any games ranked above 90% in review scores. That is really odd and seems to show a bit of a bias.
In terms of game quantity and quality, the Nintendo DS has the best software library of any handheld, ever.
Honestly, I think "handheld" should be changed to "system" at this point...
You know, I would have to agree with you. It is still stunning to me that DS has hardly any games ranked above 90% in review scores. That is really odd and seems to show a bit of a bias.
I think many reviewers give automatic (possibly subconscious) deductions to handheld games because they don't look the same as console games.
In terms of game quantity and quality, the Nintendo DS has the best software library of any handheld, ever.
Honestly, I think "handheld" should be changed to "system" at this point...
You know, I would have to agree with you. It is still stunning to me that DS has hardly any games ranked above 90% in review scores. That is really odd and seems to show a bit of a bias.
I think many reviewers give automatic (possibly subconscious) deductions to handheld games because they don't look the same as console games.
Yeah you are probably right but it seems very wrong to me. Shouldn't a game on ANY console be rated compared to other games on its level? In a way this is why I tend to discount most Wii reviews because I believe the same bias permeates it as well. Not that it matters unless you allow reviewers to spoil the fun you have with a game!
I'm inclined to think there's a review bias as well. *sigh* Well, we're still a new medium. We'll figure out a way to compare games to each other in some sensible manner in a couple of decades I'm sure.
Aww, a DS love-fest! Count me in!
Someone should make a retrospective bump of threads when the PSP was announced.
Aww, a DS love-fest! Count me in!
Someone should make a retrospective bump of threads when the PSP was announced.
Those are always fun to look back on. The launch was even better! Forums, gaming journalists (I still remember one of the big sites, 1UP maybe, rating Trace Memory down because its graphics weren't as good as Ridge Racer on PSP), everyone turned into rampaging trolls upon the PSP's launch. Precious hilarious memories. <3
The DS got slammed because it had one good game at launch, and no games for a year afterwards. Compared to PSP, which had a good launch lineup and much prettier games, it looked like PSP should blow it away. It was only after developers had a year to play around did the DS start gaining momentum.
The PSP launched with more games than the DS had accumulated in total at that time. To assume the DS was going to get creamed was a very logical conclusion at that time. Had the trend continued it probably would have been creamed but it was like a game-a-month pace at the time. It was really bad, embarassingly so. I waited a year to get a DS and I don't regret it. I know some people will crap on me for noting this, and they'll be the same people that back then crapped on me, but at that point the DS SUCKED. It was an absolute joke of a system. It has really turned itself around since then.
The DS was a joke when all you had to choose from was Ping Pals and a bunch of other garbage.
Enjoy your revisionist history, guys. Believe me, I'm one of the DS' biggest fans and had one day one. But I'm not going to sugar-coat the fact that it sat on my shelf until Christmas 2005. After that, it was amazing and continues to be amongst my all-time favorite systems.
What's funny about the PSP is that Sony's goal was to replicate the console experience on a handheld. While that sounds good in theory, in practice it makes no sense because the handheld games don't offer anything different from the console games. In other words, instead of PSP games being regarded as a neat handheld interpretation of a console game, they instead come across as a slightly inferior version of the console game.
Sony was always thinking "How can we make PSP games more like PS2 games?", but they instead should have been thinking "How can we make PSP games different and unique from PS2 games?"
Good Lord how did the PS2 or PS1 ever survive their initial years of nothingness?
Where did this myth come from? YEARS? The PS2 I'll admit struggled for the first six, seven months (I was making fun of it at the time).
Enjoy your revisionist history, guys. Believe me, I'm one of the DS' biggest fans and had one day one. But I'm not going to sugar-coat the fact that it sat on my shelf until Christmas 2005. After that, it was amazing and continues to be amongst my all-time favorite systems.