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PSP or DS? What’s best? The opinion. So, then. Sony Playstation Portable or Nintendo DS? They’re both hand-held, both videogame machines, both roughly in the same price bracket. It’s a straight choice isn’t it? If it is, let’s look at some of the choices already made – Nintendo got the jump on Sony hitting the market well before the PSP and scored extraordinary successes in superb Japanese and US launches. The DS has become the most successful videogame hardware launch in history (1.4m units shifted). Sony later sold half a million PSPs in its own Japanese launch. The Japanese have certainly chosen – although perhaps not decisively in favour of one or the other. Japan is a sophisticated market where the nuances of the two machines have been scrutinised, noted and, it would appear, equally lusted after.
The editorial team here at Rodent have also chosen – so far 6:1 in favour of the DS. UK gaming industry mag Edge appears to have chosen too – again in favour of Nintendo’s machine. You can’t turn a page in that magazine without falling upon almost fanboy-like adulation of the DS. Many Japanese customers have chosen to purchase both units, and this begins to get to the heart of what might prove to be both potential strength and potential downfall for these new portables. Quite simply: DS and PSP cannot be compared in any truly meaningful way. Right now (and we Rodents will admit providing plenty of fuel to this particular fire) the Internet is crammed with polarised PSP/DS debates.
Stop it. Stop it right now. There is no point. The two machines belong to different worlds: PSP is from Venus and DS is from Mars. But we want both. We want to play GT4 on a sparkling giant handheld screen and we want to lose ourselves in Feel The Magic with it’s touching, pointing, blowing charm. We want the moon on a stick and we will almost certainly put our hands deep into our pockets to get it. But, as it happens, I’m also a retailer and more to the point a soon-to-be retailer of finest electronic comestibles. My team and I are acutely aware that the success of the new generation of platforms is absolutely critical to our own ability to buy food for our children in the coming years. And you know what? IF Nintendo and Sony broadly act as we expect on pricing and availability in the UK and US marketplaces then we have inked-in sales volumes 5:1 in favour of the PSP. At retail, when faced with a choice – we believe five customers will prefer PSP to every one customer who takes home a DS. But this would be a fucking disaster for the industry. We need a strong competitive range of platforms, we need choice and we need a nimble, innovative, Nintendo driving Sony forward as well as itself. If our prediction is correct then the DS could already be dead. Even if Nintendo ship, and sell, its predicted 5 million DS units this year, that will not be deep enough of a user base to sustain the machine in the long term, especially as the momentum will swing so fast and so solidly in favour of the PSP as soon as its retail distribution is in place and reliable – lets say by summer 2005.
Let me just say one more time – I want the DS to be a roaring success. I want customers to enjoy another wonderful choice reminiscent of C64 or Spectrum, Amiga or ST, PC or Mac: that wonderful agony of choosing between two compelling options. The wonderful feeling of belonging that one experiences when falling in with a chosen tribe. I want mates to delight in championing their choice as surely as their friends champion their own. I want kids in the playground to defend their machines with coat-pulling and spitting, all the while secretly wanting to play the other’s machine. But this isn’t going to happen. And you want to know why? Because the Nintendo DS simply isn’t good enough. There I’ve said it. Fanboys scroll straight down to the ‘call me a cunt’ link at the foot of the article now. Anyone else who cares about videogaming and who wants to understand how we have arrived at this conclusion – please read on. CONTROVERSY 1 Imagine you’ve come to Earth from another planet where knowledge of gaming, its heritage, its timelines and its stars mean nothing (working for the production company behind Gamesville would work too). On a table in front of you, there’s a powered-down, shiny black iPod-like PSP and a mysterious silver box full of 1950s sci-fi retro-chic charm. You flip open the DS. Already, before a single pixel has flickered, you have begun to form opinions and expectations. The opened silver box has revealed two tiny little screens whereas the, already finger-print covered (and you’ve not even touched it yet) black slab next to you appears to offer just one huge display.
You press the power button on the DS and a welcome screen appears. Metroid Hunters is snug in the slot and you select it by tapping the screen. But before you have a chance to experience the innovative new control mechanic you decide to flick the power slider on the PSP too – just to see. A sweet jingle, a flash of aurora borealis, the PSP logo and then… …a loading screen. Just as you are about to lose interest, the PSP clicks, whirrs and a vast, bright, crisp screen simply explodes out of the blackness. It’s fast, vibrant, aggressive and stunning – the colour, the smoothness, the impact. Utterly extraordinary. That’s the first reason why the DS isn’t good enough. On a huge unit you get two tiny, milky little screens powered by a graphics capability that, while representing a move forward from Nintendo’s own Gameboy Advance, is generations back from that being delivered by PDAs, many mobile phones and yes, by the PSP. And that it would be, was utterly predictable. Indeed, Ninty claim that crippling the graphics capability was a positive design choice from the very start. Madness. CONTROVERSY 2 Ahhh, ahhh, aaaahhhh but yeah – graphics whores aren’t real gamers. It’s the games, not the graphics. Graphics don’t make great games, graphics mean Doom 3 but gameplay means Doom II, ner. Absolutely true. Undeniable. Yet FIFA still outsells the vastly superior Pro Evolution Soccer series. Customers still buy the game license for Shrek 2 and shite like Driver ships by the articulated container load. That’s because most people aren’t as discerning as you. Not everyone is so hooked into the pulse of quality. So, Nintendo. Protector of innovation and unique, pathos and purity-filled IP. Sony. Manipulative cash-ins of the very worst kind. Licence, license, licence. Same old games time after time. Are we agreed then? Nintendo = great games. Sony = casual, shallow experiences.
Bollocks. Utter, bollocks. Yes, the DS has launched alongside a superb and varied games line-up and yes the PSP is coming to the market supported at launch by a relatively uninspiring selection of titles. No argument there – but within months, for every Warioware there is an Ape Escape Academy, for every Zookeeper there is a Lumines (and, for that matter a Zookeeper itself), and for every Mario retread there is a Final Fantasy mash-up. And coming down the line soon are Mercury, GT4, Dynasty Warriors, Harvest Moon, Winning Eleven, Viewtiful Joe and, yes, Grand Theft Auto. I don’t care if Harvest Moon in an old title on a new platform – playing it, in lovely cartoon graphics on a train is absolutely welcome and people will love it. It is not true to suggest that the DS is home to the better, more pure games. The PSP can not only match it punch-for-punch but do so in a way that offers instant appeal at retail – the point at which most customers will make their choice to buy Nintendo or Sony. RED HERRINGS “Yeah, but the PSP will scratch”. “Loading times on the PSP are intrusive”. “The PSP battery is rubbish”.
“The DS hasn’t got MP3 playback and that”. “If you flex the PSP the UMD shoots out”. Those of you who have already bought a DS: you haven’t bought a terrible games machine but you haven’t bought the machine you were promised, or that you deserved either. The PSP, forget all the multi-media bollocks, is the true Gameboy Advance Advanced. GBA, a SNES in your pocket is a wonderful portable package: long battery life, tiny form-factor, great button layout – all those hand-held joys that Nintendo has delivered time and time again. DS was an opportunity to move on, to take things forward – two screens may prove to do just that, and certainly there are already games that make good use of the layout. But to experience the benefit of these advances requires playtime, and a good dollop of playtime at that. Time that simply will not be available at retail.
My team and I are desperate to sell lots of DS units next Christmas. Two new platforms and all the accessories and software to support them is retail gold – but we are wracking our brains trying to understand how we can afford to both give space and time to DS in such a way that we can show customers what they are missing if they overlook the machine. But 5:1. Even with our best efforts we don’t think we’ll be able to beat that ratio – and we suspect other retailers will give a single Christmas to the DS before relegating it to a dark corner. This is Nintendo’s fault. They have failed to deliver the unit we deserved. The Nintendo DS is a great machine to play games on but is simultaneously not good enough to sell itself alongside the extraordinary ‘wow’ factor of the PSP. And the one, single, score for the DS? It’s a big one, and one which we hope lots of people get to experience: touch screen. Forget the two screens, its touch screen that opens up so many great opportunities for new and exciting game styles. It is a stroke of the old Nintendo genius. Again, however, it’s the strengths of the DS, rather than any weaknesses, that point towards a more appropriate market positioning for the machine. The Nintendo DS plays right back into one of Ninty’s longest standing (and as a Cube and GBA owner – most irritating) misconceptions: that Nintendo make games machines best suited for children. When viewed side-by-side, the DS will be the choice of the youngest kids. Older kids who are bought DS will long for the day they are grown-up enough to have a PSP. Even this opportunity for the DS relies on Nintendo accepting the mess they’ve made for themselves and dropping the retail price to a point so far sub £99 that it is in a different bracket altogether to the one occupied by the PSP.
Even down at a lower price the DS risks competition from another angle: games on mobile phones. 2005 is set to be the year phone-gaming blossoms, already the regular user base is in the millions. As phone screens get better and games become more prevalent, dedicated portable games machines will need to offer something stunningly different. The extraordinary screen and the beautiful gloss finish of the PSP does exactly that. The tiny DS screens and huge bulky form factor does not. Many Rodent readers probably hate me now. I’m sorry. I wanted Nintendo to do the job properly just as much as you did. And, as attractive as the thought of a coach-load of kids on an outing from the Tourette’s treatment centre pictochatting the word ‘cunt’ to each other is, Nintendo just haven’t nailed it. They’ve thrown acid into the face of a beautiful model by providing the innovative DS with such atrocious displays: tiny, blocky, blurry and utterly inadequate buried away in an oversize case. You and I will see through that, and see through to the quality of the games – but most potential owners will not. And that Nintendo crippled the DS even as they knew Sony were running down a different track is appalling. Christmas 2005 will be the end of the DS. We hope Nintendo has the true next-generation GBA in a lab somewhere. It’s crucial to those of us who love videogaming that they have. February 2005
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