Portable Gaming Evolves

Like it or not, portable gaming has been in a decline in the west. More specifically, dedicated portable gaming devices like the DS, PSP, and more recently the 3DS.

The 3DS has been a failure in terms of unit sales at this time. The DSi and yes, even the PSP has been out selling it. Their weak software line up and price point may be to blame. It’s still too early to write them off. It won’t go the way of the Dodo, Nintendo has yet to launch one of their triple A title, which could turn the tide. But if you’re a shareholder of the company, you’re not too happy because you want results and you want results now.

Now with the Sony’s new PlayStation Vita on the horizon, can they actually do any better? What most speculated would be a $400 target price point, Sony has placed itself in a nice competitive sweet spot against Nintendo by pricing the Vita at $250.00 (wifi only version, 3G version is $300). With a software lineup not too different from it’s PS3 brother. There are plenty of gaming enthusiasts willing to throw money at this cutting edge piece of technology. Sony has learned their lesson on their first go around with the PSP. They’re adding a dual analog stick and getting rid of UMD’s. Still, you can’t help but look at this hefty piece of hardware and wonder… am I really going to be lugging that thing around with me? The PSVita is packing a lot of power at the expense of size and weight. It’s much larger than the PSP which many found the original to be a big clunky device. It’ll be like carrying a brick in your pockets.

E3 is going to spin up some excitement for both platforms that is sure to boost sales on both ends. But something that oddly enough isn’t making a showing in E3 this year is taking the portable gaming market by surprise. If you haven’t figured out what I’m leading to, then I suggest you ditch that crappy GSM phone and upgrade to a smartphone asap, especially if you’re a gamer. From 2009 and 2010, iOS and android game revenue increased from 5% to 8% while portable gaming shrunk from 24% to 16%. The numbers look a lot less prettier for portable gaming if you just look at portable gaming revenue. Titles being sold under $5.00 is proving to be very profitable from the sheer number of sales.

Right now, when you think of gaming on your mobile phones you probably think about a stupid bird being flung from a slingshot to some kill some stupid green pigs head. The first thing that comes to mind is lame pick up and play casual games, while fun at times it’s not anything that can sedate strong urgings from a hardcore gamer. So are these devices capable of delivering the hardcore experience we’re looking for?

I tried my hand in some emulators for my android device. Granted, my EVO4G is one of the high end phones of 2010 with much more capable phones coming out this year. You take it for granted, but what you’re carrying in your pockets would have been considered a super computer a little over a decade ago. Many emulator apps have been taken down recently but they can easily be found on the web. Some of the best ones are SNesoid, Nesoid, GBCoid, Gensoid, psx4droid, and GameBoid. After you’ve download the appropriate app, find the rom’s for it won’t much harder. With a big enough memory card you can store up to 5 rpg’s from the PSone era on it. Playing titles like Final Fantasy VII, Chrono Trigger, and Tekken 3 it dawned on me… this little device can meet my hardcore needs. While the battery life can be an issue at times, I always plug my phone to a charger while idle for extra juice anyways. Playing emulators doesn’t come with its faults either. It can be glitchy, laggy, and completely freeze on you. When you seek for help on the issue, you’ll run into this a lot. “It’s free; it’s an emulator, never meant to be played on your phone”. There’s just got to be a legit better way.

Sony’s new Playstation Suite might be the answer. It’s a new service that will provide downloadable Playstation content for certain android devices certified by Sony. The Xperia Play is an android device specially made for this with a slide out game pad built in. The Vita will also be capable of running these games. They plan on releasing original PSone titles for now with perhaps later on including entirely new developed games.

This might be where we’re headed in the portable gaming market. Depending how well the 3DS and Vita do in the coming years, I would not be surprised if it ends up entirely being a portable phone gaming market with other services like the Playstation Suite spawning from it. Can you imagine a Steam service for portable phones? My mouth waters, it should be an interesting few years on the portable gaming front. I see an era coming to an end. Some folks may be against it. They don’t like change and would like to keep things they way they are. I on the other hand, embrace this new direction we’re going in. Either way, portable gaming in general is here to stay.

By: Ron Vera