Yeah, some of you in the States might harp on me, but I still feel that the PAL market is going to play a bigger role in this generation of consoles than it has in the past. Europeans pay way more for their games than Americans, their systems are more expensive, and yet, they still buy a crapload of both. Maybe it's the value-added taxes? I dunno. Point is, it started to hit me with the release of Lumines Plus. The game felt like yet another whoring-out of a good license. Then, as I talked to my wife, she mentioned that Europeans haven't picked up the PSP at nearly the rate that Americans have. While PlayStation 2 pretty much dominated the region, the handheld has had less of an impact. For a developer, then, wouldn't it make more sense to re-release your handheld games, which aren't doing so hot in a region that voraciously buys software, on a platform that has insane market penetration?
Now, Dark Mirror, that's a game that looks pretty good on the PS2.
It hit me again as I glanced through some archived e-mails that show off the Top 10 sales charts from earlier this Spring, and damned if Vice City Stories for PS2 wasn't locking down the number-one slot for UK sales for a few weeks, even if it got overshadowed by the likes of God of War II and MLB 07: The Show on the March NPD charts in the US. It tells me that globally, developers are delivering games to a market that is more likely to spend money on a slightly less-expensive PS2 port of a PSP game than on a handheld game.
That's not to say that Dark Mirror will be a bad game by any means on the PS2. If nothing else, Sony Bend seems to have really taken its time and worked much harder on enhancing the look of the game so that it feels more natural to the system than the uglier ports that we're seeing come to PS2. I'm just wondering whether other developers will start following suit with re-tooled games coming to PS2 with just the multiplayer left to keep the PSP version interesting.
Is this the bad end of the "wow, PSP games look like PS2 games on a handheld" double-edged sword? Or is it great for those of you with PS2s who aren't planning to drop cash on a PSP? You tell me!
