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Classifying gamers' responses to the hypothetical 'Wii bubble'
In response to remarks from Steven Kent to USA Today predicting an upcoming Wii bubble burst-- an end to its massive popularity, brought on by a high price relative to its power, Game|Life's Chris Kohler wrote a brilliant editorial looking at what he sees as the four different kinds of gamers (in terms of casual-to-hardcore) and how such a bubble burst would affect them.Most interestingly, Kohler defines the "casual gamer" not as we do now (non-gamers who enjoy some Bejeweled) but as the majority of the gaming public who buys systems following price drops and owns two or three games. The grandmas and such fit into the "expanded audience." The other two categories, "hardcore gamer" and "kid" are much easier to define.In Kohler's view, the only audience whose interest in the Wii would be affected by a "bubble burst" would be the casual gamers, who may be more willing to respond to an Xbox 360 price drop than an underpowered Wii. Unless, of course, the Wii gets a bunch of mass-market games.
The winner of Leipzig? PSP
NOTE: This editorial is the opinion of Andrew Yoon, and does not represent the opinion of PSP Fanboy, Joystiq or Weblogs, Inc.Every video game convention, there's a "winner" of some sorts. It's pretty safe to say that the Nintendo Wii "won" the last E3, proving that waving around our hands can be fun. Not only did the Wii prove that the control scheme works, there was an amazing list of exclusives, from Nintendo's own Mario to third party efforts, like Red Steel. Nintendo wowed the crowd at E3 because of the amazing quality and potential of the games for its system.Did Nintendo pull the big win at the Games Convention in Leipzig, Germany this year? No. Did Microsoft? No. Sony took the win for this year's show, but not because of a great showing of PlayStation 3 goods (there were none at the show), but because of Konami's absolutely excellent lineup of upcoming PSP games. Yes, you heard me right: PSP "won" Leipzig.
2.80 Blowout: The aftermath
NOTE: This editorial is the opinion of Andrew Yoon, and does not represent the opinion of PSP Fanboy, Joystiq or Weblogs, Inc. With that out of the way, I'd like to take a minute to look how the new firmware upgrade released today has worked, and what it has shown about Sony and the PSP as a whole. While homebrew may be a hot topic, it's clear that most people use the PSP the way Sony wants us to. We got nearly twice as much traffic today on a day with this new firmware than we did yesterday. What does that mean? I think it means that people are genuinely interested in updating their PSPs and getting the most out of them.
Pages on why Playstation Portable is not dead
You may remember chubigans as the compiler of the great Flash Arcade collection. After reading more on the death of PSP, he couldn't take the incredible fanboy flaming that took ablaze on the internet. chubigan's latest blog entry will most likely only fan the fires, but in support of our handheld darling. He makes note of how the PSP has been selling neck-and-neck with the DS (before the introduction of the DS Lite) and how the media capabilities of the PSP make it quite a value-added system. In fact, he uses his Excel skillz to demonstrate the similarities between a PSP and a 360.The dearth of console ports, the lack of a singular title that every PSP owner must buy (except maybe Grand Theft Auto?), and journalistic pessimism fueled by Sony's arrogance, are all helping to shape PSP's currently negative image. But "to declare the PSP dead, when sales, developers and sometimes even the website's own review scores declare otherwise...well, it's f-in ridiculous."
