ngmoco CEO: NGP DOA, 3DS A-OK
3DS 'gimmicky', Sony and Nintendo 'hurt'
Neil Young, boss of major developer ngmoco, has said that the NGP will be "dead on arrival" but that the 3DS will be "competitive."
Talking to IndustryGamers, Young argued that the PSP was "done" and that the NGP would struggle in the handheld market due to the increasing popularity of cheap titles for smartphones.
“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,” he said, adding, “there are tens, if not hundreds of thousands of free applications that are really high quality.”
Young claimed the NGP's graphical power would not necessarily guarantee success. “It's not a PS3 quality experience," he said, "in terms of getting broad adoption, having great processing power is not necessarily a prerequisite for great adoption in the marketplace."
He also dismissed the argument that the iPhone and iPod touch don't play games well. “It's not like it's crap at playing games,” he said, “it's pretty good at playing games and it can do a whole bunch of other things as well."
Young then went on to call the 3D aspect of the 3DS gimmicky - but believed the system would cope better than the NGP in the handheld gaming arena.
“I think Nintendo will likely be competitive,” he said. “Nintendo has great franchises and there are tens of millions of people who want to participate in those franchises, so that always helps. But the real question is the degree to which there's a third-party community.” Young also said he thought Nintendo and Sony were both "clearly hurt" in regards to the increasing smartphone threat to their traditional portable systems.