Earthquake Might Shelve Sony's NGP Handheld Till 2012

[Greg Tito]

Earthquake Might Shelve Sony's NGP Handheld Till 2012

The Sony Computer Entertainment of America CEO said that the earthquake in Japan has disrupted its supply chains.

Sony hadn't yet announced a release date for the handheld codenamed the NGP - colloquially known as the PlayStation Portable 2 - but many assumed it would drop in 2011 before Nintendo's 3DS had even more of a kung fu grip on the global handheld market. Unfortunately, yet another consequence of the 9.0 magnitude earthquake that struck off the coast of Japan on March 11th is that Sony is not sure that it will be able to produce enough of the handhelds to launch globally this year. Jack Tretton, President of SCEA, said that the NGP may only come out in one region for the holiday shopping season.

"It raises the bar on the competitive issues that Sony is going to have to hurdle," said Edward Woo, an analyst from the same firm as Michael Pachter - Wedbush Securities. "As it is now, it's already going to be almost eight months behind Nintendo, and a delay could push that to a year."

Despite claims that the a lackluster launch event in NYC [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/108997-U-K-Retailers-Refute-3DS-Returns-Report], Nintendo's fancy handheld appears to be selling well. I'm not sure that releasing the NGP now or later would make that much of a difference, honestly.

Still, the troubles for Japan due to the earthquake and its aftermath are not deniable. The Western gaming industry tried to show its support for everything that Japanese games taught us with a documentary called Gamers Heart Japan to encourage everyone to donate to the relief effort there. If you can, check it out to see Peter Molyneux, Sid Meier and even Escapist's Susan Arendt, Newton Grant and I talk about what Japan has given us [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/the-escapist-presents/2996-Gamers-Heart-Japan].

Source: Bloomberg [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-04/sony-new-playstation-portable-may-be-delayed-by-japan-disaster.html]




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[Snotnarok]

Well much like the PSP, I'll see about finding someone to buy it for me over there. I dunno why there's so much negativty toward the PSP, since there are actually some awesome games for it. But whatever PSP and GBA SP have been my favorites for a while now over the DS legacy.

 

[BrunDeign]

Well launch events mean jack diddly in terms of how well the system will do in a few months time and that article about returns in the UK was complete fabrication on the part of a stupid tabloid so I think this problem with the NGP is just what Nintendo needs to pull so far ahead in the handheld race.

This is definitely Nintendo's silver lining in the earthquake disaster.

 

[Something Amyss]

I can't help but see the analyst is employed by the same guys as Patcher and want to take this with a grain of salt. Nothing against the guy, but association with Patcher makes me skeptical of everything.

 

[NezumiiroKitsune]

Sony should do whatever is necessary to abide by their deadlines for the NGP, in spite of the catastrophic events in Japan. Delays will not benefit sales, and putting it off after Christmas 2011 could be crippling to overall first year sales and by extension how it reaches the attention of masses who don't follow release schedules and gaming news. This will only serve to give Nintendo this years Christmas foothold in the market on top of over half a year of birthdays, where a vast proportion of their units sales will come from. They need to get the NGP out there, and do what it takes to get back into as normal as possible operations as soon as possible. Supply lines by air shouldn't be too greatly affected after all.

 

[Nincompoop]

Now the earthquake doesn't seem like such a good thing after all *sarcasm*.
Naw, I am joking. Of course people should report these kinds of developments that occur when disasters strike, but I always feel it's stupid and in bad taste to concern ourselves about petty matters such as material goods, when lives are ruined or worse.

 

[mjc0961]

Well, I'll try to look at the bright side. Nintendo gets more time for the 3DS to have the dedicated* portable game machine market all to itself and hopefully they can use that to start selling the system on its other features instead of focusing on the gimmick they named it after.

And on Sony's side, they get more time to make sure that their launch line-up isn't as abysmal as the 3DS lineup (another thing Jack apparently said that wasn't mentioned in this article is that they can use the extra time to work on the launch games). They can also do more testing and make sure that all the features it's supposed to have are in the box at launch instead of pulling a "wait for the firmware update 2 months later for the rest of the features!" like Nintendo has with the 3DS.

*Keyword is dedicated, as in the device is for games first and other stuff second. So leave your comments about iPhones and Xperia Plays at the door please, I'm not talking about the "phones that also play games" market here.

Supply lines by air shouldn't be too greatly affected after all.

Supply lines don't matter if you don't have enough product to send through them. I think that is the big problem here, being able to make enough NGPs to have enough stock to launch the NGP globally without shortages on par with the Wii.

Of course, I don't know why Sony tries the global launch anyway. It always fails. They were going to globally launch the PS3 as well, until they had to push back the European launch for a little over four months for whatever reason.

 

[Digikid]

Oh well. Not a big deal. Anyone who whines over this gets a good kick to the head. I mean they had a HUGE problem over there. Earthquake, Tsunami, a nuclear disaster....

There are more important things to life than a portable game console.

 

[Xersues]

Now the earthquake doesn't seem like such a good thing after all *sarcasm*.
Naw, I am joking. Of course people should report these kinds of developments that occur when disasters strike, but I always feel it's stupid and in bad taste to concern ourselves about petty matters such as material goods, when lives are ruined or worse.

This. I hope those affected are safe and their lives can go back to normalcy as soon as possible. That is some scary shit that went down there.

---

I really doubt it will delay any plans, Japan is not one that manufactures this stuff, that's what Singapore, China, Indonesia are for generally speaking. Japan might not really be in a mood to buy the NGP, but the rest of the world has no problem. My guess is an NA/Europe launch will happen first.

 

[Shadow-Phoenix]

Well my hope for Japan recovering goes on but thank god they delayed it for now and hopefully they will notice that the jacked up price isn't worth buying the thing.

 

[Uber Waddles]

The longer Sony delays launching the system, the longer Nintendo has to start pumping out quality products for the 3DS.

The only thing that stopped me from buying on right away at the release was the fact the launch had NOTHING that held and gravity with me. The games were just shovelware, or remakes of mediocre games.

Had a Mario, Zelda, Metroid or Pokemon entered the 3DS fray from the get go, that console would have been mine. Instead, I bought a PSP and Birth by Sleep.

This is bad news for Sony: I can guarentee once first party games start coming out, and Holiday times, sales will skyrocket. Sony could have edged in there and had a fighting chance, but now that seems to be going out the window.

ALTHOUGH I AM IMPRESSED AT THE TWO ANALOG STICKS. DEVELOPERS NEED TO LEARN THAT A DPAD AND ONE ANALOG STICK IS JUST BAD DESIGN, IM LOOKING AT YOU 3DS AND PSP.

 

[Defense]

The news just gets worse and worse it seems. I hope Japan can bounce back.

Well much like the PSP, I'll see about finding someone to buy it for me over there. I dunno why there's so much negativty toward the PSP, since there are actually some awesome games for it. But whatever PSP and GBA SP have been my favorites for a while now over the DS legacy.

It's just the popular machine to hate.

 

[Snotnarok]

The news just gets worse and worse it seems. I hope Japan can bounce back.

Well much like the PSP, I'll see about finding someone to buy it for me over there. I dunno why there's so much negativty toward the PSP, since there are actually some awesome games for it. But whatever PSP and GBA SP have been my favorites for a while now over the DS legacy.

It's just the popular machine to hate.

I gathered that but unlike the N-Gage there's not really anything terribly wrong with it. Maybe I'm bias because I've actually had a lot of fun with the library, only more so now that there's some rare PSOne games coming out on it.

 

[adamtm]

D:

But i wanted one!...oh wait im in Europe so im not going to get one until 2012 anyways...

 

[FogHornG36]

NOOOOOOOO! don't do this! you will end up being behind, and in hardware standers your hard were might as well be 10 years behind!

 

[tris4992]

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO !!!

And for the mods about to put me on probation for low contend post, just imagine all the feelings in that no. The anger and dissapointment. The helplesness and dismay. All of the raw human emotion crammed into that one single word.

If anybody knows how much it sucks to get a late start its gotta be sony/playstation. Please don't cripple the NGP sony. You've got the launch games right this time. Don't miss your one shot to steamroll into the market

I really really want that handhelf Sony !

 

[rembrandtqeinstein]

NGP looks kind of badass, but I'm still not keen on having my screen in between the buttons.