No one can deny that Sony’s NGP ratchets up handheld console gaming to a whole ‘nother level. But Ngmoco boss Neil Young believes the long-awaited device is DOA nonetheless.
According to Young, smartphones have clearly cut into handheld console territory, making it difficult for Sony to effectively compete against all-in-one mobile devices.
“I think they are hurt; I think they’re clearly hurt. I think PSP is done and the new [NGP] is dead on arrival,” Young told IndustryGamers during a GDC interview.
“It’s really difficult to compete with an app store that has hundreds of thousands of applications and a wide range of options where the average price paid is around $1.20 and there are tens, if not hundreds of thousands of free applications that are really high quality. So I just don’t think Sony’s going to be able to compete with that.”
Young also claimed that the NGP’s raw horsepower wouldn’t necessarily help the device succeed in the crowded mobile marketplace.
“It’s [just] not a PS3 quality experience… And in terms of getting broad adoption, having great processing power is not necessarily a prerequisite for great adoption in the marketplace.
“You need a range of things and what I think the iPod Touch and iPhone have been able to do is offer people swiss army knife type functionality for a device that plays games really well. It’s not like it’s crap at playing games – it’s pretty good at playing games and it can do a whole bunch of other things as well,” he added.
