According to statements Suda made in an interview to 1Up, thanks to Project Natal, Grasshopper is looking dead at Xbox 360 for the next game in the No More Heroes series: http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3175025

Where fanboys see "hate", those of us who are actually paying attention to the game market, see constructive criticism.

Exactly!!!

Just like how the PSOne was more expensive than the PS1.

Or how the PSTwo was more expensive than the PS2.

Oh wait a minute, those slim down models that packed the same punch of their originals, were actually cheaper than their original counterparts - like every other game console or game handheld that proceeded them.

I guess by your (and Sony's) reckoning, when they release PSThree in October, it too should cost more than the PS3.

Here are the facts. Sony Computer Entertainment, has been hemorrhaging money ever since they introduced PSP and the UMD, especially since introducing PS3 and blu-ray. Whether you bought into the PS3 or not, Sony is now determined to make you, the consumer, pay for their blind mistakes. So while I will admit on any given day, that PSP Go looks awesome, and is the PSP Sony should have launched with in the first place (I said as much way back in 2004, when those idiots were claiming the PSP would be the 'Walkman of the 21st Century'), there is simply no way it is even remotely worth the $250 asking price . . . after being on the market for 5 years.

The only thing that could even justify the price point Sony is begging for (no one half-way intelligent, is even going to pay this much for it in it's current form), is if they added a 3G cellphone and an OLED, haptic feedback, touchscreen into the package. But as usual, when it comes to portable technology, Sony seems to be several years behind the curve. By the time they finally do get a proper cellphone and OLED screen in the PSP, Apple is going to have pretty much eaten up all of Sony's potential marketshare in the portable space. So it will be Apple dominating the high end of the spectrum and Nintendo dominating the low end, and the PSP increasingly getting squeezed out of more marketshare every quarter. But wait a moment. Isn't the exact same thing already happening to PSP?

Fact of the matter is, the existing PSP Go as well as PSP 3000, should have both seen a price drop to $150 when the PSP Go is launched. Then I could see it not only doing very well, but actually turning the tide in Sony's favor as they carved out a solid middle 'end' of the spectrum all to themselves. But unfortunately for Sony, they are not smart enough to figure that out for themselves - so it ain't happening.

If the PSP Go had surfaced with an OLED, haptic feedback touch screen and a UIQ-based, 3G cellphone, I could see them going toe-to-toe against the iPhone 3GS. Especially since mobile carrier subsidy would have seen a 3G enabled PSP Go retailing for only $200 (still lower than the price of Sony's current plans for PSP Go). But once again, Sony is not smart enough to figure out something so simple - so that ain't happening either.

If you really wanted to see Sony's long streak of bad fortune turn good, Sony should have launched the PSP Go in two flavors. One with the a UIQ-based, 3G phone, subsidized at $200 through GSM mobile carriers, and one without the 3G phone at $150, alongside a $150 PSP 3000. The $200 phone version competes directly against the iPhone 3GS, with equal telephoy capabilities and better gaming capabilities, while the $150 is not only at a price point where Apple cannot go with iPod Touch, but the price would be low enough to finally give Nintendo a run for it's money in the low end.

But instead of doing all of the logical steps they need to turn their long streak of bad fortune into good fortune, Sony has decided that their path to getting back into the black, is through ripping off the customers who want to be loyal to them. If that is honestly their philosophy for how they run their business, I hope they never, ever go back in the black.

They are going about this all wrong.

All they are doing are creating extra steps between gamers and games.

I admire the idea behind launching the game from within Home, after selecting maps and teams, etc., but as an owner of both PS3 and Xbox 360, I can tell you that Microsoft's Party System is much more immediate. And the fact that LIVE games can tie directly into that Party System, allow gamers to congregate with their friends, chose up teams and levels, only increases that immediacy of the gamer/game relation.

Sony's way is just doing things the long way around . . . the very long way around. I am three of the 7 million people with a Home account (one for my US, UK and JP PSN accounts), and I like quite a number of people who have Home accounts, I hate booting into the thing. Having to boot into Home, and then load up the game space, and then finally get to boot up the game with my friends, is a chore, one that is not only not fun, but a waste of everyone's time as it takes far longer to do that, than accomplishing the same goal on the Xbox 360's Party System.

If Sony really wants Home to succeed as a centralized hub for social gaming, what they really need to do is build Home into the PS3 dash. And I don't mean as a separate app like it is now, but as an integral part of the dash . . . maybe even replacement for the existing dash. And even then, they are going to have to streamline the interface to make accessing the full functionality of the PS3, as well as getting into the games, much more accessible. Unfortunately, I do not think that we are going to see any of that until Sony launches the PS4.

Switching gears, as for the comments Sony keeps making about how revenue is not the driving force behind Home, I wish they would stop it with that bullshit. Because as long as I have to pay for everything in Home, and hardly any of it is ever free, then Home is very centered around revenue, and as such, will always have trouble catching on with the rest of PSN users. I think it is a shame with a company like Microsoft, who is famous for being greedy, has given away tons more free stuff for their Avatars and the NXE since it launched last November, than Sony has for Home which launched around the same time.

If Sony wishes to prove that revenue is not the driving force behind Home; put their money where their mouth is, if you will. All they need to do is introduce a user commerce system into Home, similar to the one found in Second Life. It does not have to be as open and as chaotic as Second Life, but considering that Sony has Media Molecule in bed with them, there is no reason why Home cannot feature tons of user-created content, which users can then buy, sell, trade or give away to each other.

If they really want to make Home interesting, they should have Media Molecule give me the tools to create my own home, and create my own furniture and create my own clothes, and then have the ability to create my own store front and buy/sell/trade these items with whomever I chose. But of course Sony would never, ever actually do something like that, as they are too afraid that any manner of real freedom in Home, even the quasi-freedom that I have just spelled out, would put a dent in their revenue aspirations for Home. So they either need to give us the freedom to create and trade our own gear, or stop bullshitting the whole world about how, "revenue isn't the main driver for Home."

"A fool and his money are easily parted." - Proverb

The modern era of man, seem to be chock full to no end of fools who have no clue what to do with money - witness our current economic crisis as proof. So yeah, the million idiots who paid $600 and $500 for the original iPhone, sure were happy with their purchase . . . until two months later Apple and AT&T were squeezed to lower the price of the device by $200 . . . and not pass the new price on to the fools who bought it at the higher price. And a year after that, they introduced the iPhone 3G at the even lower price of $200.

Even if those million marks were still happy anyway, despite getting ripped off by Apple and AT&T, their happiness, still does not make them any less the fool. They paid $400 too much, for nothing more than vanity. Now that the economy is shot to hell a couple years later, I wonder how many of them would kill to have that wasted $400 back in their pockets?

$300 for a PSP Go? I got some beach front property in Arizona I'd love to sell you with that.