Sorry, but somewhere in all the Sony announcements and predictions and proclamations that the Nintendo 3Ds is really a much better gaming platform, Sony has somehow managed to pull something out of the fire with a series of related portable gaming masterstrokes. And no-one appears to have noticed.
Effectively it has embraced touch for gaming, got off a permanent future on hardware based gaming, and partnered with Google, creating an anti-Apple axis of portable gaming and entertainment.
Let’s just list what it’s done on one finger at a time then. Sony has come to market with a device technically superior to the Apple iPod Touch, which because it has touch as a gaming paradigm, but has it integrated with highly responsive analog controls, and also has underside touch, for gaming navigation from either side, and has PlayStation 1 classic games, it might sell. Sony has also innovated around this with segments of the PlayStation Network especially for this, with new methods of finding gamers you want to challenge, watch or keep track of, and added GPS and 3G connection and other goodies, including a five inch OLED touch screen. That’s one.
Two. Sony decided to license the whole shooting match as a platform on Android portable devices ‘ something last year we challenged Sony to be brave enough to do – which means that it transports this gaming platform, lock stock and smoking barrel onto iPad equivalents. This, in effect makes Google love Sony, and puts them in an unholy alliance against the Jesus Phone, leapfrogging gaming quality on Android and taking it ahead of even the iPad.
Sony it will lead this off with a phone of its own, announced next week which will at least give Sony Ericsson a peep of light at the end of the tunnel as well.
Nintendo has gone down the ‘other’ route which is to instead opt for yet another hardware technology lead, with a 3D screen, which will lead it away from all the major portable gaming trends ‘ touch, generic device and making it, for the most part, a software platform. The new Nintendo 3DS will be yet another hardware revolution and is destined to only at best succeed little better than slightly in our view, because of this. Sony was never in a position to adopt that strategy, being distinctly in second place in the portable specialist gaming device market and needed to step out of hardware innovation and think outside the square.
But finally, and possibly most importantly, Sony has scored a major hit with its existing games developers by extending the lifetime of their exiting PS1games, and providing a cash cow for each of them to then go on and develop for the new Sony software Suite.
We’re going to make a big call here, and say that by putting Sony Suite on an Android, that platform will leapfrog the iPhone as the gaming platform of choice and give Sony a long term lifeline, which Nintendo may not have available to it. Remember the old Sony PSP can talk to, and play content and games held on, remote PS3s. If this happens with millions of Android devices, the PS3 will also take a major step forward ‘ most smart phones will talk to it ‘except the Jesus phone.
The reason a week after its first announcement no-one can see this, is because so far the analysis has only been done by hard bitten gamers who care nothing for corporate strategy, just for games. Looked at from the video side, this potentially gives a link from home held PS3 based video servers to remote portable Android devices which could video out streams to any other device, even a TV. This was a Sony vision we articulated in 2004/5 and it is finally coming to pass.
Another Sony benefit is that the PlayStation network will suddenly have a portal to Android devices, that’s something that Apple has already outlawed in the new policy interpretation revealed last week, when it rejected the Sony eReader application because it bypassed all Apple transaction routes in bringing eBooks to the iPad and iPhone. You can no longer put PlayStation games on an Apple device unless you use the Apple supplied in-app sales process, from which it takes 30% or sold them through the Apple App Store, from which it also takes 30%.
It is now critical that Google does not go down the same route. That would be short termism and it’s unlikely that Google will be tempted. Instead it should embrace the fact that Google Android portable devices can be built which can download from a Sony run network service ‘ initially just games, but later potentially films and music. Google’s past actions have shown that this is the most likely outcome for Google and Sony to partner up aggressively.
Now the issue here is whether or not Nintendo could go down the same route, and we think that it can’t while it insists on the strategy of coming up with better and better, more specialist hardware ‘ such as its 3DS. Let’s say we’re right and portable gaming has to become a software platform on a general purpose device, in the manner shown by the iPhone? In that case the Sony strategy gets the best out of die-hard gamers who want specialist controllers for just a while longer, and also embraces touch and embraces a software platform. The Nintendo approach risks keeping faithful customers for just one more generation (despite the fact that handheld gaming platform sales have already fallen off a cliff) but then having no next generation strategy step to make. Nokia actually did something similar back when it dumped its N-Gage hardware platform and made it part of its Ovi portal and handset software stack on Symbian, but then it wasn’t risking the most spectacular gaming franchise ever built with the move, as Sony is.
What Sony has actually announced is the Next Generation Portable or NGP for delivery later this year, a PSP replacement with a 5 inch 960 x 544 OLED touch screen, as good as a PS3 and PlayStation classic games. All this is driven by an as yet unspecified ARM Cortex 9 processor and GPU combination, which everyone is assuming is the Nvidia Tegra 3. The graphics core is a design from Imagination Technologies, fast becoming as standard in graphics as the ARM cores are on phones. Sony hasn’t yet confirmed who supplied these but Nvidia makes sense given that the PlayStation 3 graphics was provided by Nvidia and Sony has a long and strong relationship with the company. That would also put Nvidia in pole position for delivering the chips for the forthcoming Sony Ericsson PlayStation phone dubbed the Xperia Play, due out next week.
The NGP comes with both a Wi-Fi and 3G connection and an underside touch surface, reminiscent of the Motorola backflip phone which came out last year. In game play this allows for three dimension-like motion says Sony , through ‘touch, grab, trace, push and pull’ moves of the fingers. So it has invented an entirely new touch paradigm which makes it unlikely to get a law suit for copying Apple’s Gesture Touch.
The device is oval and has dual analog sticks if you prefer, for game control, and all games can be downloaded from LiveArea, a sub-section of the PlayStation Network. NGP users will be able to view an ‘Activity’ log, constantly updated with accomplishments from users who are playing the same game, which in turn can trigger active real-time communication among users.
A new application called Near will be pre-installed and go through the PlayStation Network to let users find out which of their friends in the vicinity are playing now or what they were playing recently. NGP has a new flash memory format for storing games.
What makes it more like the iPod Touch and less like a PSP is that the NGP has three motion sensors; gyroscope, accelerometer and electronic compass which can be harnessed by games designers, but also for augmented reality experiences, as well as two cameras and GPS.
The PlayStation Suite Android software will closely coordinate with NGP, bringing the same PS classic games to Android devices with a ‘PlayStation Certified’ license program. No details of anyone who has signed for it yet. Sony also has plans to open the PlayStation Store to these Android devices. But one handset company that we are fairly sure will not go down the PS Suite route is HTC. This week it acquired stock in online gaming company OnLive, a clear statement that the server played gaming system which relies on online streaming video back and forth to low footprint client software, is going to be its game service of its choice.
Interestingly Apple is even challenged by Onlive, which can deliver a stream for a big TV or for a handset just as easily, although the PS Suite devices are likely to be able to act as consoles and use a HD TV screen for playout as well.
Already Engadget is claiming that it has a picture of the yet to be announced Xperia Play.