iPhone Games Ported to PSPgo Play Worse, Cost More
The PSPgo is Sony’s answer to the iPhone in a post-App Store world, but unfortunately it looks like charging more for poorly ported games is the question. Gizmodo explains the obvious — to everyone but Sony — problem:
You see, PSP Minis can’t have any network or online features. Nor can they support camera peripherals (a major focus of DSiWare innovation) or DLC. Kotaku just reviewed iPhone port Hero of Sparta. On the PSP it costs triple what you’ll pay at the App Store. Their review? “Simplistic controls, muddled graphics and abysmal sounds turn what was a fantastic iPhone game into a oddly disjointed Playstation Portable experience.” Kotaku’s review of Tetris was much better. But you know what? Tetris costs twice as much on the PSP as it does the iPhone.
Just like ATRAC and rootkits (ouch, we know), we’re beginning to wonder if anyone at Sony will ever get this brave, new, post-iPhone world?
| Tweet |
|
|
Leave a Reply
Note: Comments must be civil, respectful, and on-topic. If a comment does not add to the conversation, if it contains spam advertising, or inappropriate language or content, it will be removed. Comments containing links may be held for moderation. Relax, enjoy, and share in the discussion.
Yea good luck with that sony!
I would have a better comment but the chart won’t load right on my iPhone to view. Was the script ported from what was used for another platform?
Works fine for me, but I removed the lightbox just in case!
Yet games like “Gran Turismo” are years ahead of anything we’ve currently got on the AppStore!
Well, Mac Games are always more expensive than PC Games. So.. big deal. Now the Mac version is cheaper.
What frog said is true. Grand turismo psp has amazing graphics. I honestly have not played a game on the iphone that looks realistic or amazingly cool. I will acknoledge that the iphone having cheaper games with somewhat good graphics is an advantage, but for the hardcore gamers an iphone is not the best portable gaming machine.
Im tearing at the eyes right now, even iphone owners understand that real games like Gran Turismo are not possible for on the iphone. Id gladly pay 30-40 dollars for a game with hundreds of hours worth of playability, over something im going to download and remove 30 minutes later (depending on price)
Of cousre, Gizmodo prefaces their price comparison by flatly stating:
“The fact of the matter is, the iPhone gaming experience isn’t all that great.”
But the Hero of Sparta review is not all that surprising to any gamer — when you design for one piece of hardware, and port to another piece of hardware with different capabilities, the second port will suffer.
Hero of Sparta suffered moving to a platform and not adapted to its strengths (iPhone->PSP). The PSP was dinged for “muddled controls,” because they were a port of what the iPhone version’s “wonky controls.” (review quote). The PSP has more control options, but they were not leveraged, and the reviewers dinged it for that — not because they were worse than the iPhone, but they should have been better, and the port was lazy.
Wolf3D on the iPhone was far worse than even the 7 year old port for the Game Boy Advance, because the game did not play to the iPhone’s strengths. The graphics were slightly better, but even with Carmack’s personal efforts, the controls were much, much worse — not quite unplayable, but far less fun.
Ron Jeremy is thinking of buying a pspgo for Ron Jeremy jr.
Hmm. I wonder how Nintendo DS games that are ported to the iPhone would fair? Nintendo and Sony have created platforms to do one thing really well. For their effort Nintendo has sold more than 100 million units (they also sold more than 100 million GBA units). Sony has sold more than 50 million. Not bad, not bad at all.
There is a subset of games that work very, very well on the iPhone platform. There are also a subset of games that work well on a platform tailored for other types of games. I don’t think that New Super Mario Brothers would play well on the iPhone. The graphics power on the iPhone is fine, but the interface to the game on the platform is a bit limited.
What would really be interesting is if Sony or Nintendo added a cell phone function in their next gen portable gaming platform.
Very simple. You want a device that has amazing graphics to play games, buy a PSPgo. True gamers don’t care about the cost of a game as long as it’s good. You want a device that makes phone calls buy an iPhone. Stop trying to compare apples to oranges.
This Hero of Sparta was supposed to be the Rage on the iPhone?! Errr, guess iPhone gaming still have ways to go to meet up with true gaming systems. Not to bad for a casual system though I would suppose. Then again, it is the casual that wins overall, look at the Wii VS PS3/Xbox360.
@Ron Jeremy are you the famous pornstar lol seriously
Garbage in, garbage out. As fellow iPhone owners, I’m surprised that you still haven’t realized that 99% of the Appstore=crap.
hmm can’t even say carp, gg filters.