Sony is facing increasing competition in the handheld gaming space with new threats from the likes of Apple, which can offers a portable games experience on its iPhone and iPod touch devices. They are also under threat from the likes of Nintendo, who are already offering much more than games on their consoles.
The Sony PSP Go, goes on sale in later this year and is aimed at restoring Sony’s position. The device is half the size and weight of the original PSP (PlayStation®Portable) has 16GB of flash memory and allows users to store thousands of songs, photos and games on the device and so compete head to head with Apple. It also has a slide-out control pad, Bluetooth, as well as a memory card slot to expand its storage limit.
Marvel Digital Comics are going portable on the new Sony PSP go service to be launched later this year. The new service will offer a library of Digital comics from several sources including the leading ones from Marvel such as, Spider-Man, X-Men, StarTrek and the Fantastic Four
The user will be able read page by page or frame by frame from wherever and enables then pick up the latest digitized editions from any Wi-Fi hotspot, download, build a library of comics and importantly widens the reach of the PSP to provide more entertainment on the go. The intuitive Autoflow feature allows the user to zoom in and move from frame to frame on each digital page, mimicking the way your eyes would move across a print page from left to right.
This brings us to question where convergence ends. Will we soon have a gaming console that is a phone and can compete with a netbook? The only one device that stands outside of this convergence is the eInk ebook reader. Can eInk sustain its postion or will users decide that colour beats shades of grey? It looks as if Sony are backing two horses but will the consumer understand this or be confused?
