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.
Klart
Whatta loada crap.
Go play with your touch games. Leave the real games to us.
GTRsannin
NGP has buttons touch controls work with simple games but more complicated games are better to play with buttons
novamegalith
i have never desired to play an ipad/ipod type game not the type of full experience i crave but this new PSP/NGP .. I really REALLY WANT IT and I’m gonna have it day ONE in my bed
spooner_22
Sorry mate but this is a GAMES CONSOLE…it’s not a phone, it’s not meant to have a great camera, it’s not for texting your friends or for going on Facebook (although it can)…it’s for playing games…high quality ones, not these simple ones you can have fun with on an iPhone…what a complete fool!
Smallville2106
I will be getting an NGP for sure. Just hope great games keep on coming for it. Also I hope it will have it’s own games and not just copies of PS3 ones.
TSBonyman
Sony’s reply : Same to you – with knobs on! :)
Rob92
When he gets Uncharted running on an iPhone, then we’ll talk.
Stupid man. Theyre clearly different markets and iPhone games are little game bites as I like to call them rather than a full on retail game.
beeje13
Iphone developer likes iPhone over something new!
thats a shock, but it reminds me very much of Valve with the PS3, “we don’t like it because its too hard to develop for, so its crap. Wait, its not that bad? oh we’ll make a game for it then!”
honestly, i expect him to jump on the bandwagon when he sees other mobile developers being succesful with the NGP.
bigdon23
Personaly i think the 3ds will p**s all over the ngp, the iphone is only popular cause every celeb has one.
Foxhound_Solid
Ios is boring.
NGP will prevail no matter how much a Smear Campaign is conjured up…