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NEWS: Sony Interactive Entertainment President Andrew House Steps Down




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Animorphimagi





PostPosted: Tue Oct 03, 2017 2:08 am Reply with quote
I'm starting to see the merits of the Japanese way of staying with a company their whole lives. I wonder where House could be going after staying with Sony for 25ish years though...
Considering how long he's been with them it sounds like he got forced out, but I can't imagine why when Sony Interactive has been doing so well.
I mostly just hate his stance on mobile gaming/the handheld market. The Vita could have been just as popular as the PSP if any decent games from major series would've been made for the system. The PSP had Kingdom Hearts, God of War, and tons of side titles for all of Sony's big series. The VIta got...P4 Golden...and what else?
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Zin5ki



Joined: 06 Jan 2008
Posts: 6680
Location: London, UK
PostPosted: Tue Oct 03, 2017 2:30 am Reply with quote
Animorphimagi wrote:
I mostly just hate his stance on mobile gaming/the handheld market. The Vita could have been just as popular as the PSP if any decent games from major series would've been made for the system. The PSP had Kingdom Hearts, God of War, and tons of side titles for all of Sony's big series. The VIta got...P4 Golden...and what else?

While this is a sad state of affairs, you could say that these decisions managed to...

...bring the House down.
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GeorgeC



Joined: 22 Nov 2008
Posts: 795
PostPosted: Tue Oct 03, 2017 5:52 am Reply with quote
I tend to disagree with the viewpoint that the PSP EVER had a great game library -- at least in the US!

When I owned a PSP, I was struck by the fact that I had more movie UMDs at one point than games!!!! Honestly, they were releasing maybe 1 game every 3 months that interested me and the good games just did not have great replay value. Many, many of those games were ports from console systems -- usually PS1 or PS2, a couple from the Sega Dreamcast. As far as having original game series, not so much, and the system's limitations meant that ports from later systems (Dreamcast of PS2) were inevitably inferior. The PSP version of Burnout, for instance, just did not compare well to the PS2 versions. There wasn't enough memory in that system to hold all the detail -- most PSP games barely looked better than PS1 games -- and many of them had reduced numbers of enemies. I'd say in Burnout PSP there were maybe half as many cars at one time as there were in the console versions? I think the only "new" game that impressed me graphically was the port of Tekken 5: Dark Resurrection. The graphics on that game were close to PS2 level at the time but it was an exception.

I think they still had region lockout on the system -- at least for the movie UMD's. I never really checked out the import side of gaming on that system. That was always kind of a pain in the ass with the Sony systems until they switched to Blu ray format on the PS3. A bunch of the Japanese-only games were RPGs (which I'm not into and I don't read Japanese) or dating sims. There weren't a lot of unique games that would have interested me beyond maybe the Gundam or Macross games that were unique to the PSP and even some of those got ported to the PS3 later!

Despite that, yeah, it was a nice piece of hardware for the time. Easily several times more powerful than Nintendo's portable hardware at the time.
The problem besides software was the tendency for the system to break easily or wear out in under 3 years. Everybody that ever had a PSP noticed dead pixels on their machine's screen. That was just an inevitable result of having an earlier-generation LCD screen but it was a beautiful color screen only slightly lower resolution than a DVD which at that size wasn't a big deal honestly. I had 3 PSP's myself in two years. I was still covered by warranty and Sony sent me those replacement in the mail after the D-pads broke on the first two within the first year! My last PSP wore out the UMD drive and it was so expensive to fix or replace the machine that I gave up at that point and traded in for store credit towards a PS3.

I never really considered getting a PS Vita after my experience with the PSP. I just knew that system wouldn't take off no matter how beautiful the hardware was if Sony didn't get its act together and get it much better software support for the US market.
It was a pity... nice piece of hardware and much improved over the PSP from what I've read and seen. BUT, they blew it again!
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Animorphimagi





PostPosted: Tue Oct 03, 2017 6:38 am Reply with quote
GeorgeC wrote:
I tend to disagree with the viewpoint that the PSP EVER had a great game library -- at least in the US!

When I owned a PSP, I was struck by the fact that I had more movie UMDs at one point than games!!!! Honestly, they were releasing maybe 1 game every 3 months that interested me and the good games just did not have great replay value. Many, many of those games were ports from console systems -- usually PS1 or PS2, a couple from the Sega Dreamcast. As far as having original game series, not so much, and the system's limitations meant that ports from later systems (Dreamcast of PS2) were inevitably inferior. The PSP version of Burnout, for instance, just did not compare well to the PS2 versions. There wasn't enough memory in that system to hold all the detail -- most PSP games barely looked better than PS1 games -- and many of them had reduced numbers of enemies. I'd say in Burnout PSP there were maybe half as many cars at one time as there were in the console versions? I think the only "new" game that impressed me graphically was the port of Tekken 5: Dark Resurrection. The graphics on that game were close to PS2 level at the time but it was an exception.


Something to think about is that I know that I'm not the only person who has bought every nintendo handheld just to play the new pokemon and NOTHING ELSE. While the PSP surely never produced a game as addicting/successful as pokemon,, there is no reason why some people wouldn't keep buying the system for only 1 or 2 games as long as those 1 or 2 games are exactly what they want (examples: Kingdom Hearts, Monster Hunter, most JRPGs, etc)
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Escaflowne2001



Joined: 29 Jul 2006
Posts: 468
PostPosted: Tue Oct 03, 2017 6:50 am Reply with quote
If you were a fan of JRPGs the PSP and sightly less so the PSV were absolute beasts when it came to the genre at a time when the PS3 was lacky in that department for a good while.
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jdnation



Joined: 15 May 2007
Posts: 1994
PostPosted: Tue Oct 03, 2017 11:04 am Reply with quote
There's absolutely nothing to indicate any 'forcing out', if anything PS4's success under him opened more doors for opportunity, advancement and salary outside the company. Or like a few others, he could start something of his own. I'm sure Sony prefers to keep him.
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BadNewsBlues



Joined: 21 Sep 2014
Posts: 5888
PostPosted: Tue Oct 03, 2017 2:22 pm Reply with quote
Animorphimagi wrote:
The PSP had Kingdom Hearts, God of War, and tons of side titles for all of Sony's big series.


Games that in some instances were ports of PS2 games or would be ported to PS3.


Animorphimagi wrote:
The VIta got...P4 Golden...and what else?


Thieves In Time, The Neptunia Remakes, Playstation All Stars Battle Royale, Muramasa, Street Fighter X Tekken, The DanganRonpa Trilogy, Virtue's Last Reward, Rayman Legends, Akiba's Trip, Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3, Persona 4 Dancing All Night, Rayman Origins, Sonic All Stars Racing Transformed, Freedom Wars, Need For Speed Most Wanted, DanganRonpa Despair Girls just off the top of my head
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