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Ready At Dawn's Two Cents on PSP Rumors
By Kris Graft
March 3, 2009
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"I'd love to see anything that can help distribution move quicker toward a 100 percent online model. It's not piracy but used games that are killing us."
Rumors about a new PSP--one with no UMD drive--have been heavily circulating in recent days across the Internet.
But Ready at Dawn, the independent studio that established itself with two highly successful PSP games--Daxter and God of War: Chains of Olympus--is still apparently in the dark about any supposed PSP upgrade.
"You know, the way these things work is that, ironically, even if there was a new PSP in the works we would probably be the last people to find out about it," Ready at Dawn CEO Didier Malenfant told Edge in an e-mail on Monday. "I really have no clue what Sony's plans are."
Acclaim's chief creative officer David Perry suggested last week that a UMD-free version of PSP hardware is in the works, citing an unnamed industry source.
Other unconfirmed reports claim a new PSP will have a sliding screen, but again, no nameable sources have emerged. Sony has stopped short of saying any supposed new PSP hardware revision would drop the UMD drive.
Eliminating the disc drive would not only cut down on the handheld's power usage and size, but it would also indicate that Sony is preparing more robust digital distribution capabilities for the system. In Japan, some PSP games are immediately available as a download alongside UMD counterparts.
Malenfant would like to see the PSP, and perhaps the industry as a whole, move more in the direction of digital distribution. "As far as what my personal wishes are, I'd love to see anything that can help distribution move quicker toward a 100 percent online model. It's not piracy but used games that are killing us."
But in light of the rumors of a UMD-less PSP, and a greater emphasis on digital distribution, Sony insisted it isn't abandoning the format, calling physical discs "critical" to its handheld business.
Last week, Sony Computer Entertainment America announced several big titles for PSP, including Assassin's Creed, LittleBigPlanet, MotorStorm: Arctic Edge, Dissidia: Final Fantasy and a version of Rock Band that will boast a "fully-featured in-game store for downloadable content in the North American and Europeans markets."
"It's great to see more and more people realizing the incredible potential the PSP has, at least when you invest the time to make decent titles for it," said Malenfant. About a year ago, he said that Ready at Dawn would be leaving PSP development to work solely on console games. But as recently as December, the exec told Edge the studio is "definitely looking into" making a return to PSP.
"As a company, we've always said the PSP was a great platform to work on and it's certainly been really good to us, so we have no complaint there."
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Copyright 2006 - 2009 Future Publishing Limited, Beauford Court 30 Monmouth Street Bath, UK BA1 2BW
England and Wales company registration number 2008885
No chance that the next PSP will have an optional UMD drive then? I mean, that big space at the back is just asking to let you slot stuff onto it- cameras, sim card slots + hard drives/ TV outs. They'd have to subsidize these attachments of course. Not crazy expensive like microsoft.
Oh and they could totally stack on the back there, so you could attach the TV tuner, the memory expansion/SimCardReader/SD card slot piece (not in basic PSP box which'd be cheaper), USB, and a 7 meg camera lens piece to top it off. It would then be the ultimate device, particularly if you could run multiple applications at once and all the other bait things
The gaming industry is where the movie and the music industries were 30 years ago. They complain that resale is killing their industry. VHS anyone? If people don't want to buy your game new, maybe you should wonder why they prefer not having the original and instead a second hand copy.
The problem with pricing is simple: games are expensive considering the market they are targeting (12-18 years old can't spend USD 60 twice per month apparently).
Is piracy relatively worse on the PSP than DS? 'Cause both are not too rare
I just think that games...or any medium for that matter going 100% digital is never going to happen. It's very ideallistic, bordering on naive to think it will. Some people will always want to buy a physical product. Plus it will be years before broadband has the penetration to make up for the massive loss of retail points of sale you'd be losing if you took that approach. What I get from statements like these are; "I don't care about the hundreds of thousands of you gamers out there without broadband access who still buy OUR product legitimately from our retail partners. I want to abandon your a** for a digital distribution model that you can't use so you and your friends can't buy our games cheap." Ticks me off.
Luckily I CAN access these digital distribution channels, but then you have worry about "returns". Most of these places tell you the sale is final. What if I end up not liking the game? It's not like you can return your download. What if I want to give a game as a gift? I like wrapping presents and giving them to people physically. it's just better. it'll never go away. That rant is more for PC and home consoles.
That said, the PSP I can maybe see it going that way, but those people without broadband really won't have access to those new games. they'll still have GO someplace to get internet access, so they might as well go to a store and buy the thing. iPhones can get away with it because you DL your games through the phone service anyplace. this is all I have time for...gotta go.
hey game devs this is a recession right guess what alot more game devs are going to bankuprt!!!
best buy and now toys are us is now geting into the used game market. They should rent games too as well. They will make a ton money on consoles games what a joke!!!
http://kotaku.com/5163436/best-buy-reexamining-used-game-sales
"Sony insisted it isn't abandoning the format, calling physical discs "critical" to its handheld business."
Of course UMDs are critical to Sony's business. Until they go digital and/ or PSP2 owners greatly outnumber PSP 1 owners, they'll need to keep selling those UMD games/ movies.
Claiming that used games and not piracy is killing the psp is a load of crap. Used games have been around since the NES era and it hasn't affected the industry that much. Also, I don't believe it's piracy that's killing the psp either, some good games would certainly help.
you have rented games and used games on console there bud plus pircay. lets think here console gamers could just skip out and not buy the game. All they have to do is rent the game. They get to play the full game rented for cheap maybe like $ 3 to $5. whats better to buy a $50 to 70 game or just renting a game for $3 to 5. If I want the dlc I just go back and rent the game agin.
Maybe if you lowered your prices and stopped fleecing people you wouldn't have to worry about the pre-owned market. Also the pre-owned market also allows people who previously couldn't afford it to buy new games
As consumers we are telling you that you're charging too much for your product.
I agree. I think it would be interesting to see a study showing the relationship between the price of a game and it's estimated piracy rate (I guess PC would be the easiest format to do this on). I'm confident that lower priced games would be pirated far less frequently.
Maybe I'm naive, but I think most people would like to support those who make the games, but many younger gamers don't have the means to afford this hobby and are tempted by the lure of piracy. Bring the games down to a level they can afford and maybe the rate of piracy will be mitigated.
Another option would "renting" a downloadable game - where you pay a significantly reduced cost to play the game for a specific period of time (1 week/2 weeks?) and then it expires.
Arron, off-topic, how did you put that Picard picture? Can you give me the exact tags?
<img src="the_url_of_the_pic" />