ngmoco boss Neil Young has spoken to Industry Gamers at this year’s GDC, saying Sony’s successor to the NGP is “Dead on Arrival”, leaving no doubt as to where his feelings currently sit.
In what amounts to a precursor to the full interview, the report on IG shows what the man behind some of the biggest iPhone games thinks of Sony’s strategy, especially with regards to pricing. “I think they are hurt; I think they’re clearly hurt,” he said of the ‘traditional’ portable consoles.
“I think PSP is done and the new [NGP] is dead on arrival. It’s really difficult to compete with an App Store that has hundreds of thousands of applications and a wide range of options where the average price paid is around $1.20 and there are tens, if not hundreds of thousands of free applications that are really high quality.”
“So I just don’t think Sony’s going to be able to compete with that.”
When asked whether he thought the ‘PS3 quality experience’ would offset any pricing issues, Young was equally determined. “It’s not a PS3 quality experience,” he replied. “And in terms of getting broad adoption, having great processing power is not necessarily a prerequisite for great adoption in the marketplace. You need a range of things and what I think the iPod Touch and iPhone have been able to do is offer people swiss army knife type functionality for a device that plays games really well.”
“It’s not like it’s crap at playing games,” he says of Apple’s device. “It’s pretty good at playing games and it can do a whole bunch of other things as well.”
It’s worth pointing out that Mr Young has a strong interest in the iPhone range, but those are strong words.
jbni
I thought this was going to be something about Neil Young the singer writing a new song about it.
cam the man
I suppose everyone’s entitled to their opinion but I think he may be slightly biased towards everything Apple.
skibadee
Apple fan boy lol.
Stef Nighthawk
Sounds like someone didn’t earn enough from his low-priced iPhone games to purchase an NGP devkit.
The pricing of the devkit was more of a problem for the PSP than the pricing of the device itself. Once the devkits got cheaper a lot more games started rolling out.
shields_t
Not sure I value a Canadian folk singer’s opinion on portable gaming ;-)
Sympozium
Eh… I’d rather see the traditional gaming handhelds succeed, I just prefer playing games like Monster Hunter, A few platformers, great racing games and the odd puzzle..
I just hate the idea of gaming on a touchscreen (without buttons)
ruinereraser
NGP – Keep on rockin’ in the dev world!
teflon
Neil Young used to be good in the 60s-80s, but I don’t really rate his most recent stuff…
Wait, are we talking about the same person? There’s /two/ people called Neil Young?! Mental. ;)
double-o-dave
Looks like he’s been out of the loop too long, probably due to riding around deserts on a nameless horse.
jacklum
‘Horse With No Name’ wasn’t a Neil Young song (even though it sounds like one).
Sympozium
On the desert with a jet and a 5-star level….. YEAH!!!
jayjay119
The I-phone/touch market is completely different to that of the NGP/ DS market so his above points are invalid. I would much rather buy a proper gaming device such as the NGP than try to play games on my I-touch which has the most woeful control I have ever had. There’s just no tactile interaction with an I-touch and that irritates me. I think the NGP could arrive dead, but not for the reason that the i-devices are greater and better, but by the fact that Sony will fail to adequately push it like the PSP and Move post release.
AnimaOnline
What Neil Young doesn’t see is that smart phones and portable gaming devices such as the NGP are both after completely different audiences. [url=http://www.ngmoco.com/games.php]Look at ngmoco’s portfolio for example[/url]. I’m not saying these are bad games it’s just as a core gamer I wouldn’t be caught dead playing games like these. The typical console gamer is like me and this audience will be NGP’s main audience. NGP’s new smart phone-like features are so it can tap into iPhone’s causal gamer base while still staying loyal to the core gamers. I do agree with him saying that smart phones are like Swiss Army knife and that will always be iPhones advantage over a specialised gaming devise such as the NGP. However, if I want to play a good game with deep storyline and gameplay such as a Metal Gear or Uncharted title then I’d never find it on current iPhones. I don’t think the technology or budget is there to produce those sorts of titles. NGP on the other hand does have that.