October 1st sees the release of the new PSP Go, the latest incarnation of the so far under whelming Playstation portable. The PSP Go is nowt spectacular in fact its really just a slight upgrade to the PSP-3000 really. But its quite expensive, priced at £225 its significantly more expensive than the PSP-3000 which can be picked up for £140, the Slim & Lite model is cheaper still at £99.99.
But as one of its major selling points, the PSP Go forgoes the UMD drive altogether and moves over to a solely digital distribution model. Now UMD was not exactly a roaring success, but Sony have decided that digital downloads are the way forward.
For the past few years in the console market, digital download has been gradually becoming quite common, Xbox Live Arcade, pioneered it, and since then Sony and Nintendo have both entered the market as well with the Wii and the Playstation 3.
But up until recently digital download was usually restricted to smaller games like Zuma, which is great, small games available for a small price on demand. But recently Microsoft and Sony have both been experimenting with selling full games as download only. Sony really started it with Warhawk, and really pushed it with Gran Turismo 5 Prologue. Microsoft have gotten into it, first with original Xbox games, and now with full Xbox games using the Games-on-Demand Service.
Now on an environmental side of things, digital downloads are great, no shiny disks to be made, no plastic boxes, no lorrys to take them to the shop. So yeah in that respect digital downloads are great.
But
Digital downloads come with a massive problem, Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo support them heavily, because they want to be the ones selling us the games, in other words they want a monopoly on thier consoles, lets face it if Modern Warfare 2 was available as a download only, and was £5 cheaper on the Xbox 360 than the PS3, its not like you will go and buy an Xbox to get it cheaper!
Game stores are also against the idea for obvious reasons, it will put them out of business, people will go to Tesco or Argos and buy their consoles and they won’t get a look in as they won’t have games to sell.
Now in the music industry digital downloads work, because MP3 can be played by all music players, and thus there is competition, so you can got to Tesco, Amazon or itunes for your music, but with consoles, that won’t work, so prices will be higher and the consumer will suffer.
A good example of this is Assassins Creed, currently its £19.99 on the Xbox Marketplace to download, but in HMV its £9.99, in Blockbuster its £12.99 and in Game its £14.99. I have even seen it preowned in Grainger Games for £5!!!
Another major downside to digital downloads is the loss of the preowned market. Speaking to a director of Grainger Games, he told me that the only way they really make a lot of money is on preowned games, he says they are pure profit. I personally love preowned games and about 75% will wait and buy a game preowned rather than buying it new. But if we can only download our games, well we are stuck with them!
So there you have it, is digital downloading the future or can we fight the man and keep our disks!
Getting back to the PSP Go, the guy at Grainger Games says that they have no intention of marketing it at all as its a direct threat to their business and at the RRP its simply not going to shift, a fella at Gamestation told me that they have been told they will not be getting any stock in store and if people ask for it, they are to tell them its not in stock and direct them to the PSP-3000 and the UMD selection! And looking at the Game and Gamestation websites the PSP Go is not being promoted at all, so that speaks for itself.
Anyway have fun,
Michael
