Opinion: PlayStation 3 won't spoil the handheld picnic
Make yourself at home, we'll still be gaming on the go
So, have you got one yet? A mortgage that is. For a PlayStation 3, of course.
The arrival of Sony's console finally concludes what's seemed an interminable bout of foreplay in the latest console love-hate wrestling match.
Amusingly, Sony is now being berated by half the Internet's pundits for not selling out its initial European stock of PlayStation 3's – despite shipping and almost certainly selling far more than fanboy darling Wii and the Xbox 360 did on their debuts. Sony as the Microsoft-style whipping boy of gaming: Who'd have thunk it a decade ago?
Here at Pocket Gamer, we love games and we love the potential of PlayStation 3. The more the merrier, as far as we're concerned. We certainly don't think it'll have much impact on the growth of the pocket gaming scene, though – our smaller handheld titans are fighting their own battles.
Indeed, US analyst David Cole even suggested this week that handheld gaming will be bigger than TV-based games by 2011. We wouldn't know, to be honest, but we agree that mobile, DS and PSP aren't going to be swayed much by the success of Wii over 360, or any nervous moments with PlayStation 3.
DS looks set to be the new Game Boy for the next five years; the challenges for Nintendo are providing enough fresh titles for its Touch generation casual gamers (a new Nintendogs or Brain Training-style game has been conspicuously absent), as well as deciding when to risk an upgrade, and perhaps addressing the over-reliance on Nintendo's own games developers.
Multi-million sales aside, PSP does have well-documented issues to do with price, suitability of titles for handheld gaming, and relatively minor flaws in the hardware (specifically control, loading speed and battery life concerns) but surely PlayStation 3 can only strengthen the console's hand, particularly if Sony can make better use of PSP's wi-fi features than the occasional tweak of the firmware. Whether Sony is committed to its handheld is another matter altogether – we prefer to think it's been distracted!
As for mobile, it still stands in relative isolation – rightly or wrongly – from the mainstream games scene. PlayStation 3 won't directly affect the popularity of mobile gaming any more than a new dance craze would.
That said, there's one way in which mobile (and indeed DS and PSP) could benefit from all the manufacturer's hardware finally being in play. With the console industry now entering a stable period, games publishers might have more time to consider how to better launch their games across all the platforms in the market.
At the very least, mobile game versions of PS3 or Xbox 360 games could benefit from piggybacking on the latter's marketing campaigns; more interestingly, they could be better integrated with the titles themselves.
Neil Holroyd from T-Mobile makes some encouraging noises in our exclusive interview on Pocket Gamer this week about phone operators agreeing to launch games across the network on the same day and date. If games publishers could also get in on the act with their mobile spin-offs, mobile gaming could finally benefit from a bit of olde worlde co-ordinated media razzmatazz.
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