Following the unveiling of the new NGP from Sony, we're starting to gather more and more analyst reaction, and it's worth noting that although many are thoroughly impressed with the unit, from a business perspective NGP might not have enough mass market appeal to effectively take on Nintendo's 3DS and the surging iPhone/smartphone sector.
"[NGP has a] strong software lineup, but unlikely to hit the mass market. At launch, Sony expects to have a strong lineup of games for NGP, including Activision’s Call of Duty as well as Sony first-party titles, including Killzone, Uncharted, and LittleBigPlanet. While clearly differentiated from the more casual games that have made the iPhone a phenomenal success as a video game platform, it remains unclear whether there is mass market potential for high-end portable games. We note that Sony’s PSP did not meet initial sales expectations despite offering the highest quality graphics on a portable device at that time," Lazard Capital Markets' Colin Sebastian said.
He added, "Over time, we expect the NGP and PS3 to offer concurrent game-play in the 'cloud'.”
Mike Hickey of Janco Partners sounded excited about NGP, but he too was still unsure of Sony'schances against Apple and others. "We are expecting a +$250 price point for Sony's NGP. We're naturally excited over the muscular hardware specs including: two analog sticks, 3G connection, touch screen, OLED display and developer support. However, we suspect Sony's NGP will face considerable market competition from smartphones, tablets and Nintendo's 3D's gaming handheld," Hickey told us. "We believe Sony's PSP and PSP Go failed to resonate with today's mobile gamers; and view the NGP as an evolution not a revolution from the aforementioned. The mobile gaming market moved aggressively away from Sony's interpretation of a mobile game experience, and it's not clear to us that the NGP is mapping to that new market."
