PSP Phone won’t suffer from the same problems as N-Gage

The news that Sony is planning to release its own phone is being widely reported. Starting with a report on Engadget, the world has learned Sony Ericsson seems to be designing a mobile device that combines portable gaming (via the PSP) with mobile technology (via Android) has been happily received – by most. But an immediate comment I heard was “hasn’t this already been tried? The N-Gage from Nokia was a complete disaster!” And so I present the reasons that a PSP Phone won’t suffer the same problems as the N-Gage.

1) People are used to the idea

Playing games on your smartphone is a common pastime now. It has been such a popular function applications that it has fed back into feature phones and other non-smart platforms. Over 2 million games get downloaded from Djuzz every week, and it doesn’t service smartphones at all. This change in public perception is thanks entirely to smartphones, and more specifically to the iPhone. These devices showed people that you can play good (or, at least, engaging) games on a phone.

Things were very different when the N-Gage was released back in 2003. Nobody thought of mobile devices as gaming platforms. The idea of combining your phone with a games console seemed silly to a lot of people. The general opinion was “why have a compromised games platform in a compromised phone, when I can get a decent phone and a Gameboy?”

2) A compromised phone?

The form factor of the N-Gage was so bad that the actual phone functions were compromised. In order to fit the gaming platform into the N-Gage, Nokia made some truly appalling design choices. Just look at the thing:

It’s hideous! Using it as a phone was an ordeal. On top of which, the mic and mouthpiece were located on the outer edge of the device, so you had to hold it side-on to your ear.

Image from Daily Mobile

This isn’t something that Sony Ericsson are going to suffer from. For one thing, they’ll have learned from Nokia’s mistake. For another, smartphones with large touch-screens are now a proven platform for games. And finally, the addition of a few discreet buttons at the bottom of a device can easily add the extra inputs that are necessary for true portable gaming.

3) Compromised games platform

Unfortunately, all those sacrifices made on the phone design side didn’t lead to a good games platform either. The tiny, low-res screen didn’t compare favorably to other gaming devices being released at the time. Also, Nokia wasn’t a gaming company. It didn’t have a great library of games for the phone to run. The Game Boy Advance SP, which was launched at roughly the same time, outsold the N-Gage by 100 to 1.

Again, this is something that Sony Ericsson won’t have to deal with, for two reasons:

1) Sony is one of the biggest games companies in the world, with the truly enormous sales machine that is PlayStation under its belt. And while the PSP can accurately be accused of being a mediocre portable games platform, it certainly doesn’t lack a large games library.

2) The phone will be running on Android 3.0. Known as Gingerbread, this up-coming OS from Google is specially designed to run on high-spec devices (see our report) with at least 512 MB of RAM, and a minimum screen-size of 3.5 inches – with a minimum resolution of 1,280 x 760 if your screen is over 4 inches.

What we think?

So, there you go. If anyone says that this has already been tried and failed by Nokia, tell them that the PSP Phone won’t have to repeat any of the mistakes of the original, failed experiment. It is free to move into open pastures of new mistakes, and fail completely on its own merit.