The Portable Gaming Battle and How to Win
It's quite obvious that the king of the portable gaming industry is Nintendo's Gameboy. Coming out with a new machine about every other year (Most of which are minor improvements over previous machines) and providing excellent support for the older machines (read: new games), Nintendo has portable gaming in an iron clad grasp. Sony's Playstation Portable maybe be the greatest step foward for the industry introducing top-of-the-line graphics and true online play. Many software issues are answered and new innovative features are added regularly through the automatic wireless update service. However, the PSP suffers many un-fixable physical gripes including an obvious lack of the second analog stick, some dead pixels, and the questionable quality of the UMD (Universal Media Disk). Let's talk about the UMD letter for letter. First, U for Universal. The disk is hardly universal, working only in the PSP and supporting about five different movies. Next is M for Media. Like I just said, the UMD has a movie library of about 30 different features, and so far absolutely no music videos have been released on the format. Here's the reason that movies on the UMD are failing. A UMD movie with no special features is $30 and a DVD with many special features, sound and video settings is about $15. Well, I can't really say anything about D for Disk, so I guess it's not all negative. Now...How to make the perfect portable console.
Step 1: Keep the format simple. A UMD or the DS's game cards can take back seat to a simple little Mini-DVD or something of the like
Step 2: Add a second analog stick. Because of this stupid little cut back on Sony's part first person shooters have to suffer on the PSP
Step 3: Make the graphics current or even next gen. Even if it drives the price up a hundred dollars, the gamer won't care if they're looking at a portable Oblivion that doesn't make their eyes bleed
Step 4: NO PORTS. I can't emphasize this enough. Unless the fans are demanding a remake, make it exactly that...a remake. Don't try to clone an already existing game, especially if the portable control scheme doesn't support the game (I'm looking at you Ape Escape)
Step 5: No Gimmicks. No cellphone features, no dual screens, no touch screens, no friend codes...NONE OF THAT. Just stick with the plain old. Don't say, "We're new and unique because we have this new feature that's brand new...It's _____"
Finally Step 6: Embrace the indie game industry. The PSP is frantically trying to cover security patches that make it so that the homebrewers can't sneak in their games. Don't block them out! Sell them a $60 Dev Kit and let them make their own games. It will enrich the games library and add a couple extra years to your system's life.
If one game company follows the above steps they might have one of the most successful systems yet.
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