Satoru Iwata is worried that Sony isn’t doing enough to show how the NGP is different from a smart phone.
Despite his fears about being misquoted or mistranslated, Iwata has shared some of his thoughts about Sony’s upcoming handheld with the Asahi Shimbun newspaper in Japan. He expressed concerns about a number of possible missteps that Sony could make with the device, which he feels might hinder its success.
Iwata’s first concern is that having to pay a subscription fee in order to use the devices 3G functions will diminish the device’s appeal. Perhaps more importantly however, he implied that developers for the NGP don’t seem to be doing enough to differentiate NGP content from what you might find on the iPhone or iPad. Iwata said that it would be difficult to convince people of the value of the more expensive content available on the NGP or 3DS if developers weren’t offering people something that they couldn’t get on a smart phone.
Iwata’s concerns are certainly valid, but with so long to go before the NGP comes out and so much information that we don’t have yet, it’s a little too early to start second guessing what Sony might do with the device. The handheld might be bristling with touch pads, and the games we’ve seen so far use them a lot, but with its powerful graphics hardware and dedicated gaming controls, there’s plenty it will be able to do that an iPhone can’t.
If Sony did try and play Apple at their own game, it would almost certainly lose, but it’s hard to believe that the company is stupid enough to do that. When we do eventually see the marketing engine spring to life for the NGP, it seems much more likely that Sony will play up the NGPs hardcore gaming credentials and not how well it apes the iPhone.
Source: Andriasang
