Studio 'has returned to its studio-friendly roots', Yoshida says
Sony returned to its dev-friendly era in building the PSP2, according to the man in charge of the firm’s global fleet of studios.
SCE Worldwide Studio boss Shuhei Yoshida appears to have personally encouraged a developer-first approach in building the new handheld – something he had pledged to do last year.
In a new interview, Yoshida said the input of external developers “has been essential for us to make final decisions on PSP2”.
“As a result of this, we went through many iterations of PSP2,” he said.
“It reminded me of the early days of the original PlayStation, when we visited many developers and publishers to get feedback during the development of that product.”
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Last year, in an exclusive interview with Develop, Yoshida admitted that the PS3 was a big challenge for developers to work with.
That console, Ken Kutaragi’s last, is one of extraordinary power and complexity but had exposed Sony as putting itself before game development partners.
Those days are over, Yoshida said in a new interview on the PlayStation Blog.
“It's almost as if SCE has gone back to basics, which should be a good thing,” he said.
Sony's business has developed a real smell about it. The company continues to disconnect with consumers and in some cases chooses to attack its customers. PSP was a disaster but what Sony did with PSP Go was even worse. Users who purchased expensive UMD games and movies have been stranded. It is not the first time either - Sony music services where dropped and users of Minidisk and DAT where dumped in earlier decades. The latest fiasco of dropped features out of PS3 without warning has really got communities offside. There are options for consumers and the likelyhood of more competitive products from vendors with more open standards and better reputations are on the rise. Sony is dying and that smell of decay is bound to make devs nervous about investing into yet another Sony platform.
I'm all for learning with the past, but you should be looking at the PSP failures too, not only the PS1 successes.
For example, unless the PSP 2 featured 3ds-like 3D graphics, there is no excuse for not having a touch screen (a proper one). A back touch screen is hardly inovation, seems like a step back, or sideways. When I first heard of it, I was sure it was because you would release a 3DS-like technology that wouldn't allow direct touch on the screen. It would be an extremely inteligent solution to that problem.
What is there to be excited about the PSP 2? Graphics? Come on, again with that?
And why the smell isn't Sony releasing a glasses free 3D console, why? Isn't Sony supposed to be the "go to" guy for 3D stuff? I think I'll save my money on those 3DTVs until Nintendo release one...
Forget about the "no excuse for not having a touch screen".
Lesson: Don't post without checking twice when you just woke up : Or at all.
I think you have a point regarding 3D, but this is all a balancing act.
I mean, 3DS has like 3 hours battery life! With that PSP2 wouldn't even turn on :o)
I've just made a brief investigation into PSP development and so far it seems really cheap.
Can someone please share if there are any additional costs other than the dev kit, such as requirements to get our titles rated and trademarked?
Fellow developers have 'whispered' complaints of hidden QA costs for each release; I see mention of QA, so can someone please fill me in on this. So far I can only see the costs of a €1200 development kit, which is peanuts compared to another popular platform I'm working with. And it is almost as cheap as iPhone development.
