Sony: No PSP in Europe for Several Months

Running a very close second, in those same stakes.

So Sony has so far sold only one million PSP units?! At GDC Nintendo said they had sold almost four million of DS, and expected to ship six million by the end of March... Sony is really digging themselves in deep so early in the game... I don't think they will recover from this. Nintendo has the "magic touch."

What a lot of wasted effort on the part of PSP developers who are going after the smaller market. Didn't we all know this would happen?

True, it's possible that once Nintendo get ahead with the DS in a few million more in sales that Sony won't recover from it. Perhaps PSP will do well when it's out but will it be enough to topple Nintendo.

When the public looks at the DS they don't see a handheld N64 like we hard core gamers do, they see a handheld that does 2D/3D games with a unique interface for gaming. They can see it's different and that the games will be different too. Where as you look at the sexy PSP and we've seen it all before since our PS2 can do the same or similar thing.

First Sony Harakiry

LOL maybe the new Euro Sony boss doesn't like Euro

This resemble the time when Nintendo took many wrong decisions, not taking in acount gamers dignity, we already saw their answer about the square button problem in the PSP, It was like: "It is your problem, take it or live it, or get use to this imperfection", then they realize of the big mistake of their answer and change it.

This prepotent attitud dosnt help.
Being in the first place for all this year can afect people and companyes.
They should tell the true: "we dont have enough hardware to distribute between USA and Europe market at the same time, so we will launch the PSP for Europes months later" .They should say this months ago, not to wait until the last minute. Of course the idea is to influence buyers so that they dont buy a DS , but hey, what about the honesty and respect toward buyers?

Look at the coments around the net from Europe , people craving and suffering cause theyr order is delayed, is not fair with buyers.

People from Canada who dont like the game which comes with the PSP and it is charged for $50, has to eat the game if they want to buy a PSP.

Sony should change their marketing strategies,

"I have a DS and a Jap PSP. The PSP is about 137,548 times better than the DS."

I have both (DS and PSP) plus PS2 and GameCUBE.
PSP is useless for me. In NO WAY PSP is better than DS (expect in theoretical technical terms) I play only PS2, GameCUBE and DS. STYLUS INPUT and longer battery-life just make DS far better handheld than PSP and with FAR GREATER POTENTIAL.

Or as a counterpoint;

When the public looks at the DS they don't see an innovative games console with touch, microphone and dual screens like we do, they see a small PDA with two screens that is supposed to be able to play good games, but currently mostly has "old" 2D games for it. They can see it's a PDA 'cos it uses one of those pen things. Where as you look at the sexy PSP and it's familiar because we can play the same games as on our PS2 and it's from Sony who are "cool".

Not saying I (fully) believe it, but the public are not you and I.

This is Sony failing to capitalise on an opportunity. We're four months behind the times with the DS, and it's a little more expensive than it reasonably should be. A £130 March launch for the PSP would have been killer. As it is, they're looking at the same catch-up game they face in the US. Whilst production limitations have obviously been a factor in this decision, it's a shame that we couldn't have had the choice so quickly.

However, don't be so quick to write Sony off. Nintendo may have four million sales under it's belt, but that's after a few months in Japan and four in the US. Sony has still yet to tap the US and European markets, both of which are very large, and the PSP is outselling the DS week after week in Japan. Remember: this is the company that knocked Sega off it's perch in the 32-bit generation whilst starting from second place, and vapourised a year-plus gap against a console with the most successful launch ever (at that point) in seemingly no time. Both the Playstation consoles were not the first of their generation to be released.

As for the public "getting" the appeal of the DS, I beg to differ. Looking at the games they're buying, we have an awkward conversion of a nearly decade-old game in the top DS slot, followed by a touch-screen sequel to a game that has seen three sequels (including this one) in less than two years. The third-highest DS game in the charts is a remake of a newer platformer, having only clocked up about half a decade since release. Then, we have an awful racing game.

Here's your inaugural DS top 10:

1/ SUPER MARIO 64 DS
2/ WARIO WARE TOUCHED!
3/ RAYMAN DS
4/ ASPHALT: URBAN GT
5/ POKEMON DASH
6/ THE URBZ: SIMS IN THE CITY
7/ TIGER WOODS PGA TOUR 2005
8/ PROJECT RUB
9/ ZOO KEEPER
10/ SPIDER-MAN 2

Stylistically and in terms of gameplay, Project Rub is the freshest thing on that system, yet it languishes below cash-in fests such as Pokemon Dash, The Urbz (epitome of a lazy conversion, this) and Tiger Woods. It's having trouble staying ahead of a movie tie-in for which the momentum died long ago. So what do we have? Sequels, remakes, cynical franchise cash-ins and unmitigated s**t, and that's just the top 5.

I'd say that the public hasn't gotten a single damned point Nintendo has been trying to make. If the DS is flooded with unimaginative toss in the coming months, we know exactly who to blame.

why does everyone target the launch titles? these are always crap, on every console i have ever owned i have never seen a selection of top titles for the launch

Super mario ds and warioware are good games, they are great launch titles. PSP doesn't have much more to offer at launch nothing does it. You have to wait for great titles its very early at the moment for both systems

Why waste ur top titles at a time when the unit is going to sell loads anyway, might as well save the best till later when things start to slow down to pick up sales again

I beg to differ.

Hardcore will buy the DS no matter what, if they haven't already imported it. This is the first week/month surge that every platform gets. This is what we are seeing now.

Older gamers will see sequels and old games and wait for the better games to come along.

Casual gamers will not be impressed by the launch line-up, they want FIFA and the like. They will wait for the popular, mainstream games.

Given a choice between the GBA and the DS, a working parent isn't going to know the difference. They will buy the cheaper console - the GBA.

All of the above will cause a dip in sales, probably after Easter now, but it will happen.

For Nintendo to keep the momentum up, they need to get a lot of mainstream games, innovative games and must-have kids' games onto the DS. They also need to educate people in why the DS is so revolutionary, and, more importantly, why that is such a good thing.

Once the hardcore rush is over, Nintendo are going to suffer with this line-up, unless they can get some games out there that are better for the above markets.

Unfortunately, to attract the mainstream casual gamers, that means getting games out there that "we" (the hardcore, Internet-savvy gamers) will despise. More EA games, to be precise. And that means shovel-ware ports aplenty, which will undermine the "novel" and "revolutionary" aspect of the DS.

You do mean Seppuku, right?

Only gaijin refer to it as "hari-kari"

And only uneducated ones murder the spelling so completely.

Divine Wind! *parp*

Does anyone remember Star Control? That s**tty little rodent's (Shofixti?) ship's "special" weapon was called that, and did exactly what it said on the tin (no, not waterproofing protection)

Ultimatly, I think that both the PSP and DS will do well. In the long-term I would expect the PSP to replace the GBA/DS as the market leader.

However, I still believe that the DS (here I go again!) does offer a unique opportunity for gaming, something far and above the PSP. Thus, I cannot agree with Roddy Toddy that the PSP is hundreds of thousands of times better than the DS. They are just different.

If Ninty does release a new handheld console then the market will change again.

Well I personally hope both psp and ds are a big success. I'm currently somewhere in the middle of playing project rub and really loving it. That's the sort of game that I bought a ds for. I can't imagine that running on any other system and I'd love to see the psp games do something like that. Games that are pushing the system's features instead of trying to shoehorn old ps1 and n62 games into them.

I'm not at all surprised that EA is one of the first to push out DS games that in some respects are lame since they are used to doing this anyway. I understand that the DS will get some N64/PSone conversions over it's life but I also feel that in time the true DS gems will shine through the sea of cheap lazy dross. I know they aren't all from EA but the have the most games out so far. Even though Ubisoft put out Rayman at least they also tried sothing new with Sprung (though I know it's not out yet here).

This shows the gulf of creativity between east and west when Sega can push out a well thought out game like Project Rub and EA disrespect us and the DS by pushing Tiger Woods and The Sims Urbz out of the door thinking we won't notice how shameful they are. EA are in for a quick buck ride and it should be really interesting to see how innovative they get with the DS. I said once before that they DS will show the pro developers from the amatuers and from someone who relies so heavily on sports games I see EA in the later catagory.

Meanwhile smaller developers like Majesco prepare the brilliant looking Nanostray making EA look like the amatuers they are labelling themselves as. What is wrong with this picture and who is better DS developer in your opinion out of the two? In the end smaller developers may become more valuable to Nintendo than EA on the DS, while EA opt for the easier route of pushing their wares on PS2 conversions to PSP and the like because it's easier while putting the knife in the heart of the industry slowly.

I'll be watching EA like a hawk to see if their games improve for the future, but with Need For Speed Underground 2 in the DS pipe line their lack of originality is starting to show compared to others. I also find it hard that they push such games when we could have a C&C game which is more suited to the DS interface (time will tell on that one).

As for the PSP delays I hate it when this happens but these are the chess moves of Sony looking to make money and they don't mind being second for now so long as it pays off in the long term to getting them first.

I think you are spot on about the smaller developers.

Do you remember the company called crawfish that made gameboy advance games? I think they made eks vs. sever and ported a streetfighter game. They were doing some impressive things on the GBA but despite that it didn't save them from closing. Everyone else at the time seemed unwilling to do anything except the safe option. I couldn't see games like warioware twisted coming out back then and they showed that kirby roll about demo thing about a million times but they were never brave enough to release it.

But I think the markets for such things have changed since crawfish were around. The handheld market right now is probably the most interesting, more so than the console market. There seems to be a lot more ideas being thrown around and a lot more desire to come up with something different.

well ANYTHING would be better than EA boring us all to death with their wares

That's a really good point, Joji.

If Nintendo can support small developers, and hobbyists, then their developer base will grow. Small developers produce innovative titles - and small acorns grow into big oaks. Nintendo would be investing in it's future.

In this case, even if the mainstream developers stop supporting the DS Nintendo could rely on smaller developers - remembering that it could publish the titles itself.

However, in this senario Nintendo would have to take a backseat. Recently, they brought a small UK developer on board to produce a game - unsurprisingly it became Super Mario Ball. We don't want more of the same crap. Small develoeprs could provide the new, fresh, modern, non-childlike games with a little cash from the giant.

In reality I just can't see Ninty having that much sense.

That really has a lot to do with how good GBA2 is.

I love the Office PSP, and was counting on getting one for my birthday next month... but now they are not coming out till (much) later, and I have the office one to use if I want, I'm much more likely to wait and see how good the GBA2 is. If it matches PSP for screen size, can take some form of removable memory and can play GC games, I'm just as likely to buy a GBA2.

OK, that's just me. But you can't write Ninty off in the handheld market. They know it best, and they have most experience.

I'm not wiritng them off yet, but I think that they will have to produce something beyond everything they've ever produced before to get the market back from Sony if they let them have it.