[BenchyUK]

Ok, we've seen the hardware and at the rumored £179.99 price, i really want one.

What are peoples views on the pricing for the games?

Currently, i find the games simply too expensive. Some games are a full £29.99 retail UMD Price. If i'm going to embrace the Go, prices need to come down

There is talk of SONY implementing a subscription based model. I think it was along like lines of say 4 PSP games for a months worth of pay for £10 or so. I'm assuming game saves will stay on the PSP and you just carry on when you renew the subscription.

Here's one article

Report: Developers told of PSP rental plans at GDC


With a colossal amount of PSP games on the way, it's a platform i now want to get into.

Game already i want are

Resistance
Motorstorm
Little Big Planet
Resident Evil Portable
New Metal Gear Solid
Grand Tourismo PSP
Rock Band Unplugged
Assassins Creed and the list just goes on.


Lets Discuss

[ocelot20]

I posted this in the normal PSP section but I will post it here as well.

Game.co.uk are now taking pre orders for the PSP Go for £179.99 or £174.99 with that £5 off £50 voucher knocking around the internet.

Am really looking forward to the PSP Go it looks great but I do agree about the game prices. I think they should be around £20 mark. Am really looking forward to the new Grand Turismo and Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker. Also Resident Evil, Little Big Planet, Assassins Creed.

[Br0ken]

I've long thought the ideal model for portable consoles is to sell the device as cheap as possible and recoup the loss (if any) through game sales.

At £230 for the PSP Go! they're taking the biscuit. I was interested in it for the Games.I would happily pay £30 for some of those titles if the games were around 7-8hours. But not anymore, I'm not prepared to fork out £230 for it.

[jabintendo]

Like others i thought £180 was even too much. I cannot justify spending that much on a portable, then spending at least £20 a pop on games, that might not even come down in price. I have bitten the buillet and asked my brother's girlfriend to get me a dsi.

[nbkicker33]

game and gamestation now have there price at £229.99 and play £249.99 and them prices sony can stuff it this oct, i would be very happy to pay £179.99 for the go, but not paying anymore for this

[London Town]

Note to Sony.....

Don't bother releasing it at that price, anyone paying £230 for it is Bonkers !!

[BenchyUK]

I think they're charging £230 atm to cover themselves. It will likely be £179.99 at launch. It was the same for the 360 Elite. They listed it for £399 yet it ended up being £329.99 when it launched

[nbkicker33]

yeah considering sony came out and said it will cost the same as when the original playstation came out cant see how they can charger certain countries that price then uk another £60, for me if it comes out at £179.99 then ill seriously consider it ,as i do like the look of it

[P-P-S-S]

Considering that PSP Go is not a major move forward from PSP i think that the price is too expensive. The handheld should have been priced at around £130. And as for the game pricing...well...dont get me started. I think Go may suffer slow sales if game prices dont get down soon.

Rant over

[dannius]

£20 is too much for a product you never actually own IMO. If Sony want digitally distributed games to really fly on the PSP Go they need to look at sub £20 for games. I paid £14 for Wipeout HD and remember thinking at the time that if it was more I wouldn't pay it.

[BenchyUK]

Hmmmm

Gizmodo - Sony to Offer New Digital Copies Of Your Old UMD Games - Umd conversion

[ROBIN50N]

psp go get screwed.

[Throttle]

Originally Posted by ROBIN50N

psp go get screwed.

Lol tbh i thought £180 was abit over the top yet £230 is way overpriced i rarely touch my PSP as imo there isn't enough good games getting released though Gran Turismo looks very good its been coming out for years so i'll believe it when i actually have it

The PSP Go looks quite smart but id want or price nearer to the £130 to make me want one and games priced at around half price of a retail release as theres no production of a box, umd, manual etc: then shipping out to shops and there cut on top of the price ...and then later you cant have no resale value on a game as its downloaded so cant sell it on.

[AiEri]

does anyone remember the r.r.p when the orginal psp (1000?) was released??

[nbkicker33]

yeah it was £179.99

[AiEri]

they did say same price as when the original psp was out.
i hope so.
£179.99 looks a lot better then £250

[Norlo]

Cheaper to produce than a PSP 3000, yet the GO costs more to the consumer.
Less functionallity than the PSP 3000, yet the GO costs more to the consumer.

Sony, Sony, Sony, you when will you guys learn. On top of the overpriced tag of the machine, Sony are also shooting themsleves in the foot with the pricing of the downloadable games -they still seem to be going down the route of charging the same price for the digtial game as the UMD version. Yet the production cost, distribution etc is vastly reduced for the former.

if you are looking to get consumers to take on board something like digital game delivery, you need aggressive pricing of the games.

The device itself is not bad looking, but at over £200, and given the PSP 300 can do everything the GO can, and more, i can't think of a single reason why you would buy a PSP GO for a while after release.

Oh wait, Sony know this themselves. Did you see the quote from one of their Execs this week? Seems the reason Sony are charging £200+ for the PSP GO is because they believe 'it's a premium that early adopters are willing to pay'. Amazing.

Did they learn anything from the PS3?

[BenchyUK]

You would have thought that all the money they'll be saving by doing digital distribution and the money they save/ get from the lack of piracy that they'd throw people who don't hack their consoles ect a bone with the price but i guess now.

£250, no chance. $250 dollars... probably go for it

[jabintendo]

I think they are comparing the price to to an ipod touch.
However, the PSP GO is not going tp placed next to the ipod touch, it will be next to the dsi which will look even better now even though the price is increased from the original ds lite.

[bigkingy]

Originally Posted by jabintendo

I think they are comparing the price to to an ipod touch.
However, the PSP GO is not going tp placed next to the ipod touch, it will be next to the dsi which will look even better now even though the price is increased from the original ds lite.

True. I think if the go was £120 max and the games were no more than £8 it would be a big hit! Look at the touch/ iphone, there are some great games often for 59p, there's a good zuma clone(think its called puzzleloops) and toki tori is the same price at the moment. If the latter came out on PSP you can guarantee it would be at the very least a tenner on download, and probably more!

[adilm2k]

I dont get thier pricing model for the PSP GO, why on earth would anyone pay £200+ for a portable console when you can get a far superior machine the ps3 for the same price. If its portable it should be cheaper. The games better be like £9 !

[Kube]

It will flop big time. Im one of the worst suckers for new gadgets and handhelds and i wouldnt touch it. Outside of Japan the PSP is so poorly supported by both Sony and other developers.

[jabintendo]

I think the price will come down alot when hardly anyone buys it.

[Nuggsy]

I'm not sure I understand why people are 'anti' PSP Go.
A DSi costs about £150 & I personally would say the PSP is a far superior piece of kit when I think of graphical capability.
I agree the games can be expensive (£39.99 for End War is scandalous) but I hear Sony is going down the iPhone apps route with the Go which makes it a very interesting proposition.
I guess it depends on who Sony sees as it's target market for this product. I'm a 30 something gamer who has to travel on business internationally regularly. The prospect of a smaller PSP & no UMD's does appeal cos I refuse to have my gadgets rattling around in my laptop bag at the airport For fear of scratches etc. so portability (pocketability) is a major consideration for me. It's possibly the reason I have an iPhone - a single piece of kit that serves many purposes which is exactly how I vew the PSP Go.
Will I buy 1? Not sure but it's not down to pricing it's down to the quality of the games. Yes Gran Turismo looks awesome but I'm a graphics whore & the vast minority of handheld titles don't quite do it for me unfortunately...

1 question from me. Wouldn't a PSP 3000 plus official 16GB stick cost about the same as PSP Go?

[BOFH_UK]

Originally Posted by Nuggsy

I'm not sure I understand why people are 'anti' PSP Go.
A DSi costs about £150 & I personally would say the PSP is a far superior piece of kit when I think of graphical capability.
I agree the games can be expensive (£39.99 for End War is scandalous) but I hear Sony is going down the iPhone apps route with the Go which makes it a very interesting proposition.
I guess it depends on who Sony sees as it's target market for this product. I'm a 30 something gamer who has to travel on business internationally regularly. The prospect of a smaller PSP & no UMD's does appeal cos I refuse to have my gadgets rattling around in my laptop bag at the airport For fear of scratches etc. so portability (pocketability) is a major consideration for me. It's possibly the reason I have an iPhone - a single piece of kit that serves many purposes which is exactly how I vew the PSP Go.
Will I buy 1? Not sure but it's not down to pricing it's down to the quality of the games. Yes Gran Turismo looks awesome but I'm a graphics whore & the vast minority of handheld titles don't quite do it for me unfortunately...

1 question from me. Wouldn't a PSP 3000 plus official 16GB stick cost about the same as PSP Go?

Two reasons why the PSP Go is getting such a bad reception pre-launch:

1) It's far too expensive for the hardware. Even at list price a 3000 plus a 16Gb stick would only cost about £230 and that gets you a machine with a bigger screen and the ability to use UMD games while still having access to ALL the stuff the Go will be able to use. Oh, and far better ergonomics too.

2) It's far too expensive for the software. Downloadable games need to be cheap for a very simple reason - the consumer doesn't own them. Sure, you have a copy against an account and can download it again if you want but there's no resale value. Compare and contrast with a UMD-based game that you can at least get SOMETHING back for once you've decided you've had enough of it.

Don't be fooled by the promise of small, cheap games either. I'd be stunned if they went to iPhone prices and even if they did I don't believe Sony will have the number of developers on-board to give the same range of choice in the app store which is, ultimately, what drives down the cost. Plus it sorta misses the point - the reason those games work so well on the iPhone platform is you've ALREADY got the device with you most of the time and suddenly fancy a quick ten minutes gaming (note this is only the sort of games Sony are talking about doing cheap, some of the best iPhone games are real time sucks). The Go is still a pretty big unit to carry around and if you've got space on there for a selection of full games then how often are you really going to reach for the cheap stuff?

The Go, ultimately, is a brave experiment that's been done half-arsed. There's NOTHING compelling about the hardware (smaller screen, worse controls, utter lack of backwards compatibility etc), the software will run perfectly on the older consoles (introduce a second analogue stick or something to make it different) and the cost is ludicrous especially when you compare it to both the PSP 3000 AND the iPod Touch which, bear in mind, is going to get a refresh probably just before the PSP comes out. If that happens it's likely you could pick up a 32Gb iPod Touch with whatever changes they make (most likely that new and very powerful hardware in the iPhone 3GS) for LESS than the PSP Go (probably around the £214 the 16Gb Touch currently sells for). That's for a better media platform, a gaming platform perfect for casual gaming AND all those lovely applications. Oh, and full internet access. And decent e-mail. And a good photo browser. And automatic data sync via iTunes. And probably a built-in camera. Suddenly the Go looks like TERRIBLE value for money.

I'll be sticking with my 2000, Sony really have made a bit of a horrlicks of their PSP product line all things considered.

[Nuggsy]

Good reply BOFH UK!
I own the iPhone 3GS & I do think it's a great piece of kit due to all it's functions - gaming platform? I'm yet to be convinced simply as there are not enough buttons to give tactile control which for me is the key.
Just one point of note - Neither Sony or the Software houses like people trading games so resale value of software is something I doubt they will ever consider when it comes to pricing.

Another question:
is it possible to share PSP dowloads like you can PSN games?
If so it means you only have to pay for 1 in 5 downloads if you share your details with like minded gamers. It's what my friends & I do so as an example 1 of us will buy this weeks CoD WaW Map Pack 3 & the other 4 get it free of charge.
If this is possible do you think people would still buy a PSP 2000/3000 Plus stick or PSP Go?

[BenchyUK]

I hope we get an announcement soon regarding the UMD 'goodwill' offer and an idea of the game pricing structure soon.

[mrapbp]

Was going to get one until I read this

[Moogle]

For anyone interested you can pre-order a North American PSP Go for just over £160 including shipping from VG+.

Welcome to Video Games Plus Online - Black

Welcome to Video Games Plus Online - White

Although there is a chance of duty being charged it's very slim as they mark down the value of the package. I have ordered 7 consoles from them over the years and never got charged duty. Even if you do it will probably workout at around £30-40 cheaper then the UK price. Bare in mind though there will be no warranty with it here in the UK. The power supply has always been multi voltage on PSP's and it should be the same with the PSP Go although I cannot confirm that myself. I've just pre-ordered one from VG+.

[Paulherb]

Hi Moogle,

I just ordered from VG+ also. Can I ask a question?

Did you use your creditcard? I did, but it did not ask for my 3 digit security code. Just wondering if the card will reject nearer the time.

I should have used paypal maybe.

Thanks

Paulh