The PSPgo is, if nothing else, a watershed moment in the industry as the first gaming console (portable or otherwise) to be designed entirely around digital distribution. It is for this reason in part that it has drawn some resistance from retail circles, though managing director of the U.K games chain Chips Don McCabe gave a damning appraisal to GI.biz.
"My own personal opinion is that it's a no-go. I've been to a number of presentations to see if there's anything there and I don't feel it'll go anywhere to be honest," said McCabe. "I'm 99.9 percent sure it's going to fail miserably, in which case it's going to put back other potential people coming into that digital space."
"From a retailer's point of view the PSPgo is a good idea," he added. "I heard from someone at Sony saying 'this steps our authority on the digital space and signals our intent,' and actually what I think is that they'll scare the crap out of anyone else who tries to follow."
While many game publishers look towards digital distribution as a sort of panacea for the industry, McCabe says that profits using that medium are much more elusive. "Everybody looks at Apple and says two billion downloads - well, yeah but out of two billion downloads I'd say maybe 70 percent of those have been free. And of the ones that they've paid for they'll have paid pennies for. Apple's a tremendous success story for Apple, it's not a tremendous success story for anybody else."
McCabe is skeptical of digital distribution's viability at the moment, likening its state now to the early boom of dotcoms. "It's going to come, no matter what, but a very small amount of people are actually going to go on to make any money out of it. One or two will make serious money and they'll be held up as 'you too can do this'. Whenever you see anyone producing fantastic figures, just ask them how much they actually made from it."
While Sony has indicated that they've seen a sales jump for the PSP in the U.K. after the PSPgo's launch, some retailers have indicated the unit is off to a slow start.
4 Comments
October 7, 2009
No idea if PSPgo will be successful, but it's hard for me to imagine anyone silly enough to think that goods that are made up of ones and zeros will be distributed in any way other than digitally. But hey, maybe Chips Don McCabe is a genius and I'm missing something.
October 7, 2009
I love the idea of the PSP Go. I almost very nearly bought one. It looks sleek and cool. I have no objection to it being exclusively downloadable distribution.
However the main reason it will fail is due to the lack of any conversion support. Back at E3 they suggested that there might be a way to trade in your UMD games for the digital version. Unfortunately this didn't happen, apparently due to technical and legal reasons. Here in Europe there is a watered down version of a trade in system for a limited time where you can choose 3 games from a very select list of games when you register the new PSP Go. However if, like me, you have say 10-15 games then having to pay for most of those games again is extremely off putting.
Sony seriously needs to pull all the stops out on this one or it will be a PSP No Go.
October 7, 2009
I basically agree with kingpin. If Sony somehow got that conversion program going, it would make a huge difference. That and a lower price combined could make PSPgo do pretty well. As it stands now though, you can get a PSP-3000 much cheaper and it can do all the digital stuff PSPgo can AND still play your old UMDs.
October 7, 2009
I think the thing people do not think about with digital distribution is the publishing function - think about how easy it is to download any music right now...and think about which music succeeds. It's still the "big name" acts for the most part because someone (the music label) is creating demand for it via promotion, marketing and/or there's a big push in stores (that wall of the new Jay-Z album, etc...). I think that until the industry centers on an "efficient" way to reach consumers in a broad, approachable way like iTunes for games, digital distribution will be held back. Steam / XBLA / PSN are really only for "trained" fairly hardcore consumer at this point.