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The other night I was going through my game collection looking for stuff to sell for ramen noodles and shrimp, when I happened to notice my PSP sitting in the corner wrapped in a plastic bag. I started to reminisce on all the good times that I have had with it and realized that I rarely even played the thing since owning it. Besides the occasional mega game like God of War: Chains of Olympus and Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core, I have not touched my PSP in a long time.

This caused me to think about questions relating to handheld gaming in general. Comparing console usage to handheld usage, does handheld usage come anywhere close to being relevant in a gamers monthly playing average? Do people really take the time to put down the 360 or PS3 controllers and put handhelds into their gaming rotation. The main purpose of handhelds is entertainment on the go, but really. How often do people play their DS’s and PSP’s when out on the go? Do people find themselves playing handhelds only because they didn’t want to feel like they wasted money, or do gamers just really enjoying playing handhelds games?

One thought led to another and I ended up thinking about the very existence of handheld gaming. The more I thought about it the more I realized that handheld systems still have a presence in the industry, but a change is starting to come. The future of handheld gaming is one that is already evident and the takeover is happening slowly but surely. All you have to do is reach in your pockets and pull out your cellphones and you will understand where I’m coming from. There are over 153 million cellphone owners in America alone so the potential reach of the games is tremendous. Combine that with owners of other portable devices like ipods and zunes and the market for handheld game distribution may be too irresistible for game developers to pass up on. These portable games are inexpensive, fun, and developer friendly. Portable games are slowly moving away from being dominated by handheld systems while cellphone, zune, ipod, etc. gaming is on a rapid and profitable rise.

This however is not the only one reason I see the transition of handheld gaming taking place. The second contributor to this every approaching change will be piracy. Piracy has always been looked at as something that only hardcore gamers attempt to do, and something that casual gamers don’t tend to bother themselves with. This has not been the case for handheld systems. Tutorials for modding handheld systems are as common and as simple as one of Rachel Ray’s 30 minute meals. Gamasutra recently had an interview with Peter Delle, Sony senior vice president of marketing, and he stated that he blames piracy for poor software sales. Nintendo has not been able to escape this growing monster as well. All you have to do is look month after month for the latest NPD numbers and ask why the games are not selling. PSP and DS software sales compared to their install base is worse the Detroit Lions 0-16 season.

This is a deadly combination that may very well cause the destruction of handheld systems. Companies are tired of investing money into something that brings minimal financial gain. Preventive measures have been put in place to combat handheld piracy such as the release of the PSP 3000 and DSi, but the hackers are always one step ahead. Game companies may be pondering to understand why such things are happening throughout the gaming community and ways to overcome this viral outbreak, but you always fear what you don’t understand. The very foundation of handheld gaming may be reinvented by the time they find their answers. All it would take is for people to buy more games and maybe developers would not be threatening to pull support for handheld games like they had did with the PSP a couple of years ago.

Written By Fergus Mills

Smooth as I wanna be. Cool as I wanna be. I rep the Koalition like Bill do for Hillary. Follow me on twitter: @fmills15 and play some game with me. PSN... "TRIPLE-OG-MILLS" XBL... "TRIPLE OG MILLS"

1. Carl Daniel says:

   April 29, 2009 at 12:55 am

   im honestly thinking the new PSP will change things

   Reply

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