Portable Gaming
See, I don't know how great Sony entering the portable market really is. Don't jump down my throat just yet. I know the PSP is a nice piece of hardware, but I'm not talking about the hardware today. I'm talking about the software.
Since the PSP is so powerful, current console powerful, a fair few developers are treating it like a console. This is wrong. Kelley mentioned this in his quick quasi-review of Ac!d. A portable game should not take an hour to play. A portable game NEEDS a super flexible save system. Save anywhere, anytime. Quick aside: that was one of the few problems I had with Superstar Saga, there were not nearly enough save points. You'da thunk funken NINTENDO would know better.
Are EA's sports games going to be portable-ized for the PSP? I doubt it. Since when does EA try to play to a system's strengths? They'll just do straight ports. And will EA even try to do anything cool on the DS? Why would they bother when the PSP is just so easy to shovel games onto?
Imagine this: a football game where you can plot your offense and defense on the touch screen. You can make up and map your own plays. How cool would that be? I don't even play sports games and it excites me. Is it ever going to happen? Only if Nintendo develops it themselves. I don't see EA doing it. Cuz the above idea, while cool, would be hard to do. Why should EA innovate when they can play it safe?
I've been slagging EA a lot in this post, mainly because Kelley talked about how the PSP will make handhelds "mainstream". Mainstream is EA. EA is mainstream.
So forgive me if I'm not as excited as Kelley about portables becoming more popular.
Since the PSP is so powerful, current console powerful, a fair few developers are treating it like a console. This is wrong. Kelley mentioned this in his quick quasi-review of Ac!d. A portable game should not take an hour to play. A portable game NEEDS a super flexible save system. Save anywhere, anytime. Quick aside: that was one of the few problems I had with Superstar Saga, there were not nearly enough save points. You'da thunk funken NINTENDO would know better.
Are EA's sports games going to be portable-ized for the PSP? I doubt it. Since when does EA try to play to a system's strengths? They'll just do straight ports. And will EA even try to do anything cool on the DS? Why would they bother when the PSP is just so easy to shovel games onto?
Imagine this: a football game where you can plot your offense and defense on the touch screen. You can make up and map your own plays. How cool would that be? I don't even play sports games and it excites me. Is it ever going to happen? Only if Nintendo develops it themselves. I don't see EA doing it. Cuz the above idea, while cool, would be hard to do. Why should EA innovate when they can play it safe?
I've been slagging EA a lot in this post, mainly because Kelley talked about how the PSP will make handhelds "mainstream". Mainstream is EA. EA is mainstream.
So forgive me if I'm not as excited as Kelley about portables becoming more popular.
posted by Tyler at 5:34 PM
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