Fuck PSP, it'll never overtake Nintendo.

Once again, Sony is aheld of Nintendo's nextgen portable on raw power, but behind in innovation. The NGP is basically just a more powerful PSP. It's Stummies, only bigger, and there have been a few flipper babies.

NGP is promising portable versions of Call of Duty and Uncharted. And while Call of Duty will likely be a big seller, Uncharted isn't a good portable title. The whole point of a portable device is that it's portable. You need a game that you can shut off at any moment and not be annoyed or frustrated that you'll have to retread when you have to do so. Sony, in essence, wants to design a console for your hands. I'm going to sit in my room and play CoD for 4 hours, I'd rather do it on a console than a handheld. Also, keep in mind that studies show that CoD players are among the most frugal of gamers, rarely buying new titles other than the newest CoD. So Sony's ability to attract CoD players to an expensive new system is questionable.

Keep in mind also that Sony is significantly upping production costs for handheld games. The Nintendo handheld market has long been the place where companies make back their money on risky big budget console titles, because the Nintendo handhelds are less powerful and require less resources to develop for. The 3DS will potentially still allow this. With 3D remakes of MGS3, OoT, and Star Fox 64 announced, except to see more companies making bank with 3D remakes of their classics. The iPhone is also becoming an increasingly attractive platform for game developers. The iPhone currently has a higher share of the handheld market than PSP. In March 2010, Nintendo had 70% of the handheld market, iPhone had 19% and PSP had 11%. I can't find more recent numbers, but I imagine, sadly, that iPhone is higher and Nintendo and Sony are lower.

Sony is also in a tough position. Back when the PSP launched, Sony was the market leader in the console wars with the PS2, and they were winning by a large margin. Their foray into portable gaming made logical business sense, and developers, fat off all the sweet, sweet money they'd made off their PS2 games, lined up to make PSP games. But thing didn't go so great. And now, things aren't going great for Sony. They're #3 in the handheld wars and #3 in the console wars. Developers aren't as eager to develop for them. If Sony wants games on the NGP, they're probably going to have to subsidize them. Or beg like a little bitch. Or end up with libraries that rival the Sega CD and N64 in terms of breadth and quality.

And where's this 3G going to come from? You're probably going to pay for it, just like pay for Live or cell service. And 3G? Fucking 3G? 3G is two years old, and is not fast enough to sustain online gaming, especially not at the caliber that CoD players expect. It should have 4G. And hell, by the time this thing comes out, we'lll probably be on 5G.

Sony explicitly mentioned Call of Duty and Uncharted as NGP titles, so we know that Activision and Sony are both onboard for Sony's new handheld. I'm pretty sure we can pencil in EA as well. EA has never met a platform that they wouldn't port to.

Douche, there are almost certainly other devs onboard, such as Square Enix, but you never know. When an industry giant develops hardware, they generally ASSUME that devs will jump onboard, and it doesn't always happen. Some of the greatest failures of our time, such as the N64, were failures because devs never materialized.