Wow, its been a while since I wrote last..
Anyway, the PSP is coming, and I'm pretty excited. Yeah, I know what you're thinking, "You're excited for the PSP? But you just said you were a Nintendo fanboy in the last entry!". Yeah, well that doesn't make the PSP NOT a damn good looking system! The games are looking fantastic, the special features look great, and that screen... oh God the screen....
I've been hearing many people complaining as of late about how game companies are trying to go "mainstream". I'm still trying to find why this is a problem. The fact that I'm buying a PSP is exactly why the games industry MUST go mainstream. Think about it, I'm a Nintendo fanboy, but I'm also a hardcore gamer. The PSP doesn't even have to advertise itself to get millions of people to buy it. However, many of those people are already playing their DS's, much like me. The hardcore gaming community will be playing the PSP regardless of what else they've already bought in the past. So where's the problem? Simple, if you keep having the same customers buying your items, you're not growing.
Going mainstream may very well be the best thing to happen to games in a long time. The major console makers are going to have to come up with ways to make the next-gen systems appealing to people who couldn't care less about games. Thus, we have the PSP.
The PlayStation Portable is probably the most "mainstreamed" gaming console to ever be made. If there's one thing the non-gaming community doesn't want to do, its try to figure out how to get their consoles connected to their TVs so they can start attempting to enjoy themselves. A handheld system is about the best thing that could change this problem. No confusing wires to mess with, just stick your game in and turn it on. Plus, with the near PS2 quality graphics, its not going to seem like the PSP gamers will be missing too much.
Next, the PSP plays music and games. The non-gaming community has been able to figure out MP3 players just fine, so I doubt they're going to have any problems getting music to their PSP. The movies they may have a little more problems with. But for them, there's always the UMD movies! We hardcore gamers may laugh at these movies due to their battery-eating problems and just how pointless they really are if you've got a copy of that movie and a PC. But the non-gaming community is going to view the UMDs as a "written in English" version of watching a movie on the go.
As much as I love Nintendo, if they want to continue going they're going to have to learn something from Sony. Mainstreaming is the only hope for game growth in the future.