A leading critic in the USA who has obviously not seen Sony’s price gouging in Australia for gaming products is claiming that Sony’s US pricing for gaming gear such as the Portable Play Station is out of touch. He has also said that Sony’s latest gaming product the PSPgo is lacking even before it has been officially launched.
A leading critic in the USA who has obviously not seen Sony’s price gouging in Australia for gaming products is claiming that Sony’s US pricing for gaming gear such as the Portable Play Station is out of touch. He has also said that Sony’s latest gaming product the PSPgo is lacking even before it has been officially launched.
 Click to enlarge |
In a leading blog DisplaySearch Director, for Small & Medium Displays Chris Cotty has slammed Sony’s new PSPgo, for lacking touch screen technology.
Cotty claims, that when it launches on October 1 in the USA, the new Sony PSPgo will retail for $250 which is $80 more than the touch-enabled Nintendo DS, whose lower display includes a resistive touch panel. This is a bit rich he claims as a Palm’s Pre mobile phone with touch screen technology sells for just $200.
In Australia, if Sony Computer Entertainment keeps up to their normal and often arrogant pricing policies the new PSPgo could cost as much as $399 or even higher.
Cotty points out that the iPod touch sells for as little as $229 in the USA, while an entry level iPhone 3G will soon be available for just $99 given Apple’s recent announcement at its developer conference.
He writes “At a time when more portable electronics products and gaming software utilise touch input, one has to ask if Sony is out of touch with the PSPgo”.
He points out that DisplaySearch’s new Touch Panel Market Analysis report forecasts that the number of touch-enabled handheld game devices, portable media players and mobile phones will soar to 82 million, 64 million and 897 million units, respectively, by 2015.
He says “The omission seems particularly risky when key rival gaming products-including the Nintendo DS, Apple iPod touch, Apple iPhone 3G, and now Palm Pre-all include touch displays”.
Cotty claims that Apple in particular has emerged as a key competitor for portable gaming.
He said “Apple’s iTunes-driven app store features over 25,000 titles, with about 25% of those titles being games. Many of those games, however, fall into the “casual gaming” category and fall short of more sophisticated offerings available on dedicated game devices like the Nintendo DS and Sony PSP. Those devices currently have an advantage in processing power available for gaming software. That lead, however, will diminish with Apple’s new iPhone 3G, which features a faster processor than its predecessor”.
He added “Battling over portable gaming would not be the first time Apple and Sony have clashed in the portable electronics market. Apple beat out Sony for dominance of the digital music market. At the time, Sony made a critical mistake by embracing its proprietary ATRAC format instead of the popular MP3 format. Sony had a similar problem with the ill-fated UMD format used in the original PSP. With the PSPgo, Sony may once again be out of touch with the market”.
