Topic: Sonys PSP vs. GBA- Does Nintendo have a chance?

[mouse_clicker]

Dark Link: I think it's more likely Nintendo will have the GB-X ready for release around when the PSP launches.

[)Dark-LInk(]

Let's HOPE lets hope they do!

[Armed]

The only way to stop PSP from taking of I think is if Nintendo is not ready to ship a new GB yet while the PSP releases, they should advertise throughout the whole media that there is gonna be something better coming soon that way the people will know that PSP will be outdated and hold out 'till that new thing comes.

[BlkPaladin]

The PSP will have a good start because of early adoters, etc. Much like the NeoGeo Pocket Color. But I doubt it will last more than a few years. First is battery consumption. From the sounds of it Sony is going for the technology and not the value.

[)Dark-LInk(]

Another thing is that sony unlike MS cannot afford to sell their system at MUCH lower cost than it costs to manafacture, so it wil have to at LEAST 150$ which wil probably DOOMED the system...

[Cap]

i dont think nintendo has anything to worry about. simply becouse with the success of the gba and gba-sp, they should be able to ride that until the possibilty of a portable gc is cheap enough.
instantly they would have 300 games or more for the system, and great ones at that. if they made gba games playable as well, sony wouldnt have a chance. i wouldnt be suprised if nintendo had this plan in the first place, and was probably a factor in their choice of the smaller disc size for gc. they would probably have to eat some hardware costs, but i think the market is theirs for a long time if they want it bad enough.  

[kennyb27]

Quote
i mean they could even call it the 'microbox' or something like that.

Haha, that was funny, Microsoft make something portable, even considered small?....Oh wait, was that a joke?

[BlkPaladin]

Unfortantly, I think Nintendo has said that their next true Gameboy would not be backwards compatible. (Posibable point to a disc format.) And adding a seperate cart port would make the unit less than portable

[Tharkun]

Yes that is a valid point, that making a card port would make it less than portable, but won't they need a memory card port anyway to save game data?  It would be great if they could make a dual port that is for memory cards as well as the GBA games (I got this idea from one of the recent news articles)

[Andi 28]

There is no need to worry as Nintendo have had competition before through the likes of Sega. They have had the best selling handheld console in the world for a good decade, and that doesn't happen through look so lets not worry about that. The onlly time we would have to worry is if Nintendo decided that is woudl stop producing games like Zelda, Mario Kart and Pokemon. O and Wario so lets worry about when the brilliant Mario Kart double dash is coming out.  

[Lanseryl]

I have the impression the GBA SP is the response to the (vaporware for now) PSP. I read on some supposedly  "serious"websites that Nintendo  have "shitted their pants" when Sony announced the handheld at E3, but I think Nintendo was aware of it for many months and released the SP, not because of GBA users demand for a backlight, but to get a hold of the (semi) adult market (if their ads campaign is any indication).
The adult market allowed the PSOne to become successfull, and Nintendo couldn't let that happen again. THe GBA Sp allows Nintendo to secure it : Nintendo doesn't have to respond to the PSP immediatly.  

[Cube323]

Wow, where do I even begin w/ this one?  First off I am totally F**king sick of $ony Fan Boys putting up posts like "Nintendo is Doomed."  Ever notice that when you visit a $ony fan site, you don't usually see Nintendo fans saying things like "$ony is doomed."  If they did, they would be flamed heavily by the single minded "$ony Nazi's" that control those boards.  If you fanboys love $ony so much why do you need to come to a Nintendo site?

I briefly interned at $ony Pictures while I was in College.  I found out that their publicity dept. will actually use any means neccessary when attempting to get the $ony message out.  (Including making up non-existant movie reviewers.)  I'm starting to wonder if that includes coming to rival fan sites and posting Idiot Threads like "nintendo is doomed."

With that out of the way, now I can say this.  Although $ony has a strong brand name, for now, GBA is even stronger.  Psp will come a year from now, after Nintendo has sold another 50 million or more, GBA:SP's world wide.
Plus there is the rumored price of the Psp, which has been estimated to be anywhere between $179 to $249!

Finally is everyone forgetting that $ony makes the worst quality electronics on the market today?!  The PSX and the Ps2 are THE poorest quality game machines on the market.  They are made with the cheapest parts and the most inexpensive labor $ony can find.  Plus when they break down, usually just after the warranty expires, the official $ony company line is to blame the consumer! (i.e. "gamers shouldn't play their systems so much")  People are starting to realize that $ony is corrupt and evil.  Will they be willing to shell out around $200 for a handheld of dubious quality?

Plus, you realize that it has already been stated that the "GBA Next" is on it's way.  All of these game companies spy on each other, it's a common practice.  Nintendo knew about the Psp and I'm sure they are well prepared for it.

As for that Microsoft hand held "hokum," I wont even address that pure fiction.  Rare can't even pull it's head out of it's ass long enough support a new handheld, even w/ M$ backing.  Plus the X-box is still losing over $100 per system at retail and no one is buying games.  You'd think they might want to solve that little problem first.

Thanks for your time

[Neo X]

     I'm going to extend on Andi 28's comment about the previous competition from Sega. Back in the days of the old chuncky GameBoy, there were 3 other handheld's, all more technologically advanced (Nintendo GameBoy, 8-Bit, Monochrome, no backlight; Sega GameGear, 8-Bit, Color, Backlit; Atari Lynx, 16-Bit, Color, Backlit, able to be played by Lefties; NEC Turbo Express, Duel 8-Bit, Color, Backlit) The only thing the Gameboy had over those is the fact that it could be played for more than 6 hours on one set of batteries. We already know that the N-Gage will only be able to play a max of 6 hours in one charge. One dissadvantage the GB had was it Veritcle positioning, rather the horizontal of the GameGear and Lynx. History has shown us that Nintendo knows how to take out technically superior opponents.

[Rich]

Neo X your forgetting something, Nintendo didn't just win because of superior batery life. they one because the game boy was the smallest and most affordable handheld on the market. I don't know how big the Turbo express was but the the Game Gear and especially the Lynx were huge. The Lynx was like a foot long and it cost a lot a of money if i remember correctly. Nintendo could win without releasing a new game boy and heres why.

-The PSP will have a 4.5 inch screen which is a big screen, but a big screen usually makes for a big console, which isnt a good thing when it is supposed to be portable. Thats 1 strike against Sony.

-Looking at the spec sheet, I wont lie, I'm impressed, but its also another strike against  them. The parts for the PSP are gonna be expensive, making the price of the system very high. Now this is a portable machine and now one wants to pay $200 on something that they will only use on trips and stuff. Its also a turn off to parents. Thats 2 strikes against Sony

- The PSP looks to want to focus on 3d games and I dont think that this is a good idea. Making a 3d game is a lot more complex compared to making a 2d game. Many publishers like to make GBA games because they are cheap, easy to develop, and can be completed in a short amount of time compared to 3d games. If publishers are gonna make portable 3d games its gonna take a lot more time and money, which, in turn will definetly jack up the prices of the games. We would see PSP games selling for $50 and then turn around and see GBA games selling for the $30 dollars they been selling at. That is a major strike agains Sony because it will turn off publishers who don't want to spend so much making a portable game, and it will turn off consumers who don't want to spen so much buying a portable game.

-The last strike is the use of there media cd's or whatever cd's they use. It's a bad idea. Using discs causes 3 bad things. 1. the laser would eat up battery life. 2. load times. and 3. having to buy something to save games onto. Now who really wants to have to change there batterys every 6-7 hours they play, have to wait through load times to play, and then have to buy a memory stick just to save their game. I sure as hell don't.

so I basically think the PSP will fail because it will be the hardware will be big, expensive, and use a disc based format and because the software will be expensive. if I was wrong about something or you disagree with me or I forgot something please feel free to correct me. Oh and if Nintendo does release a new Game boy to fight off Sony (which I think they should) I think it would be best to be out first and they must have backwards compatibility.

[Gup]

I think it'd be a mistake if Nintendo tries to rush a new portable into the market.  If they release too early after the PSP, they'd be playing catch-up instead.  I say they should wait a little(two years or something) after PSP's release and release the next GameBoy that's way stronger than PSP, the way PSP will probably out power the GBA.

[AlphaDragoon2002]

Like I've said before, PSP's success depends mainly on price.  They can't afford to make it cheap and have a high development cost like M$ (since you know, M$ has bijillions of dollars) So therefore, they have to have a low development cost and make it cheap (which would probably take away from their precious "technology" they love so much) or make it expensive to make up for high dev. cost, which will kill the system.  I'm not trying to wish doom on Sony (after all, I love the PS2) but this seems like a bad move.


P.S. Hey Gup, is that Kira from Gundam SEED in your avatar?  That show is pimptight.

[Gup]

No clue whatsoever what "pimptight" means, but yes, this is Kira Yamato.  

[The Real Mario]

Rich, I agree with you on all counts except the one about 3d games.  There are many games out there that push the GBA hardware into 3d development.  Although the GBA wasnt bred for it, dozens of games try to bring the console experience to its small screen brethern.  Its painfully obvious that publishers want GBA games to be in 3d because 3d sells (though, most of the 3d games on the GBA are quite good).

[Internet Nomad]

Sony has absolutely no chance of touching Nintendo. Kids are the driving force of the handheld arket, and kids like Pokemon. A lot. Thus, they will continue to buy Game Boys as long as the Pokerehashes keep on coming. The series has been through two "true" sequels thus far, and I don't see any signs of it dropping off. With Pokemon, Nintendo is utterly unstoppable. Couple this with the excellently-timed release of the GBA SP, and Nintendo's pretty much at the finish line before the race has even started.

Sony's only logical plan of action is to completely ignore the child demographic and target the adult audience. With MP3 and movie playing ability, this is apparently their plan. Even then, though, I don't know how many people  want another handheld to go along with their Palm Pilots. Sony is crowing that the PSP will become the center of the handheld universe, when it's painfully obvious that the cell phone and only the cell phone will dominate. Phone capabilities are the only feature missing from Sony's Swiss Army Knife portable, and will ultimately stop the handheld from becoming huge.

Will Sony come mildly close to Nintendo's userbase? Hell no, lest they make something huger than Pokemon, arguably the biggest child phenomenon ever (though most of it's died down now, except for the games). Can they even make a profit? If they take a "loss for a gain" philosophy, losing money on each console sold, I'm not sure they can. They'd then become dependent on their software, and I'm sure lots of people would buy the console just to play MP3s and watch movies and whatnot. Thus, software remains on shelves, and Sony is in the hole, even if a fair amount of people are walking around with PSPs. Their only other option would be to charge an obscenely high price, alienating their thin-pocketed PS2 userbase.

Things will probably turn out moderately well for Sony. I'm sure it won't be a total failure, but I'm not sure we'll ever be seeing a PSP2.

Also, there's no reason to buy into Sony's BS PS specs (heh). They're undoubtedly overblown.

[joeamis]

has it ever occured to anyone that the psp won't cost alot to make
because they're planning on having 10 million ready at launch.....

the main reason game consoles lower in price is because the companies
buy more parts for the console as the demand increases.

sony is taking a huge risk by producing 10 million to be ready at launch though.

as far as screen size of psp....well it only makes sense to have it 4.5 inches...
3d games require bigger screens in order to play them and who would want to watch a 2 hour movie on a 2 inch screen???

also nintendo cannot wait 2 years before challenging psp with a new gameboy... if they did that they could kiss there portable market share bye bye.
also, a 1 gb cartridge would be so expensive......no chance that's happening anytime soon, infact never probably...all consoles, portable or not, will abandon cartridges very soon.

[BlkPaladin]

Nintendo should have its next handheld ready to go out of the gates at a moment's notice. I think I heard it here that Nintendo is constantly making and remaking its next handheld so if some comes out with something that might give them a run they can one up them.

Also it has been said that their next handheld won't be backwards compatible, so it kind of nixes out carts.

[Bloodworth]

Oh, hey, this has been here since Wednesday? Learn to use the proper areas of the forums and pre-existing threads.