Counterclockwise: gaming phones vs. portable consoles, fight!

02 December 2018
Portable consoles have a long, profitable history and phone makers have been trying to crack into that market for over a decade. 

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Just like the video killed the radio star, the mobile phone killed the portable console.

    its a good time for sony to focus on gaming smartphones and release xperia play 2 in 2019 or 2020

      Peter-B, 02 Dec 2018Okay, I may have been a little too dismissive of the PSP. S... moreWell yeah, one was a successor to the Gameboy and launched at half the price of the other.

      I had both, but my PSP meant alot more to me than the DS. I have very fond memories of games like Motorstorm: Arctic Edge, Need For Speed Carbon: Own The City, both the God of War portable games, LittleBigPlanet and many more. Back in the day, movies even released on UMDs. That blew my mind.

      While I mostly remember my DS for Pokémon Diamond and the ability to play older Pokémon games via the other cartridge slot. (Well, those couple of Pokémon games do make up for over a thousand hours of playtime lol.)

      Either way, the massive sales numbers of the DS family don't make the PSP's sales any less of a success.

      (We both know that if you compared the Xperia Play to the PSP, it wouldn't even be a competition.)

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        • Anonymous
        • gLN
        • 03 Dec 2018

        no Moto Z with the Gamepad Mod ???

        that beats all other phone solutions in my mind, as its very easy to hold and use for long periods of time, magnetises to the phone, has direct input from buttons (not Bluetooth), adds the headphone port.

        they did mess up with its inbuilt battery, as this doesn't add to the phones like it is supposed to. it just power an led.

        its not the cheapest to buy the mod, but the phones now are cheap enough to offset this

          Lol, comparing smartphone with physical controls or lack of it vs dedicated portable console is same as comparing a bullet proof car agaisnt tank. Dedicated consoles will all the time win, even they loose in processing power over time. What makes Switch great is not its hardware, but proprietary chipset(which is completely used to its full potential) and exclusives games which destroys measly mobile games on android and ios platform. Doom, Skyrim, Dark Souls all of these games are full blown console games and gaming smartphones does not have non of it. Even 6 years old Vita has better games(graphically and by gameplay). Killzone, Borderlands, Uncharted. Vita is still to this day better choice than any gaming smartphone. Any smartphone with latest chipset can be considering gaming smartphone, cause there is no differentiation between them otherwise. All these "gaming" phones just grabing easy cash from users, offering same performance as in example Pocaphone which cost fraction of those. Enoufh said.

            vita ok to me ... but the problem is their memory card . really expensive just for 8gb , and it full just for update data file.

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              • Anonymous
              • ut@
              • 03 Dec 2018

              Kiyasuriin, 02 Dec 2018Sad story but it's true. real consoles tend to win. Howeve... moreWhy is it sad though? Shouldn't the better ecosystem win?

                N-gage was a joke when it was introduced. But still gool old times when phone manufacturers was different.

                  Oh, I miss the Xperia Play. What a great device that was.
                  Sure, it wasn't perfect, but would love to see it get a second go.

                    This article clearly underrates the PS Vita. Just because it flopped in sales doesn't make it terrible. Think Sega Dreamcast which is still beloved by gamers.

                    I love my PS Vita slim. Only got it for $100 second-hand but it's rock solid. I stopped using it for a bit but only started to use again often for PS4 Remote Play. I can watch all my smut privately with my TV's sound off.

                    I much prefer the Sony PlayStation ecosystem over Nintendo's and Microsoft's. The games and their exclusives cater to me more. Been that way for a good 22+ years since the original PS1 I got on Sept 2, 1996.

                    Love the PlayStation brand. I have no urge to buy the $100 PS1 Classic because most of my favorite PS1 games are already on my Vita! Portable is the way to go!

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                      • Anonymous
                      • I8m
                      • 03 Dec 2018

                      Anonymous, 02 Dec 2018that's the problem they didn't recognized how popular psp i... moreThe problem is Sony. Always holding back physically and then restricting heavily what they do give, lackluster support, over pricing, and never following up

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                        • Anonymous
                        • I8m
                        • 03 Dec 2018

                        Anonymous, 03 Dec 2018It didn't have that many good games. I'd know, I went on a ... moreIn your opinion

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                          • Anonymous
                          • LEi
                          • 03 Dec 2018

                          r33fd, 02 Dec 2018What did you mean psp didn't cut it ? It was insanely po... moreIt didn't have that many good games. I'd know, I went on a huge PSP scavenger hunt last year finding every single good game.
                          Most of them were ports. Or Monster Hunter.

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                            • Anonymous
                            • KxB
                            • 03 Dec 2018

                            No comparison really .
                            Just take an example of a play store game top games section like racing etc.
                            You will find the same old games from 2-3 years back or some new freemium game.

                              Sony need to bring back Xperia play..

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                                • Fayth
                                • tEZ
                                • 03 Dec 2018

                                miss my nGage QD, the most solid phone I've ever held
                                all gaming phone should be like this, with built in D-Pad joystick

                                  Peter-B, 02 Dec 2018Okay, I may have been a little too dismissive of the PSP. S... moreAnd to be fair, the original GameBoy, the GameBoy Color, and GameBoy Advance actually had pretty high-end parts for the time.

                                  The PSP was definitely cutting-edge, they merely stuffed up with the whole Sony Movie Studios/UMD thing and forgot to add a Right-joystick and the L2/R2 buttons.
                                  ....while the PS Vita, I can't defend that too much because the rear-touchpad was horrible, it needed more performance and more battery life, and it needed proper support from Sony/Games, which made its high-price all the more sour.

                                  A way to think about it is:
                                  1989-1998 GameBoy/Color = 1983 NES
                                  2001 GameBoy Advance = 1991 SNES
                                  2017 Nintendo Switch = 2012 Wii U
                                  2004 PSP = 1996 PS1
                                  2011 PS Vita = ...not quite a 2006 PS3 :(

                                  2018 GPD Win2 = Gaming Laptop (from 2013 or earlier) or Gaming PC (from 2011 or earlier)
                                  ....see a pattern?

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                                    • Anonymous
                                    • IV8
                                    • 03 Dec 2018

                                    Simon, 02 Dec 2018I know smartphones are popular for silly games, but they ar... moreNo no no.. Gameboy was considered a console back then and it launched with what? Tetris! Smartphone of today have many good mobile games.. True some of it may be just simple time wasting game.. But consider COC, Pekomon Go, PvZ2, Mobile Legends and other MOBAs (they even hold tournaments for these games), now they even have PUBG and Fortnite.. Smartphone is a legit gaming console.. And a very good one at that as it doubles as your communication device.

                                      Anonymous, 02 Dec 2018I sold my Henkaku Ps Vita and re-purchase the Sony Xperia P... moreTrying to compare the Vita's pretty much native PS1 compatibility (through the PSP mode, which itself was native) to an older Android is way, WAY off the mark. The Vita obliterates it easily, hands down, and so does the PSP. Solid FPS always and controls without any weird lag (NOT saying the Xperia Play has it tho) sets it for me. Honestly, even my Xperia L which has at least twice the processing power of an Xperia Play would occasionally dip the FPS on some PS1 games, none on my PSP. SNES emulation tho I will agree that PSP/PS Vita lags behind.

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                                        • Anonymous
                                        • YRb
                                        • 03 Dec 2018

                                        N-Gage was awesome, especially after they fixed the initial issues in QD. But it was killed by piracy. No one would develop games for a platform that allows piracy to be so simple. It had some awesome games (though half of them were console ports) but no one bought them.

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