Room of the niche anymore?

At the end of February Heavy Rain arrives on the Playstation 3 worldwide. The brainchild of David Cage is best described as an "interactive drama". The game is clearly a labour of love for Cage and the development team at Quantic Dream, however in the Call of Duty market why developers continue to back these projects is bizarre, isn't a business supposed to make money?

Don't get me wrong I love games, I study them but I see them from a business standpoint and investing heavily in niche games is risky business.

Heavy Rain will obviously sell a few copies because it fills a niche began by its predecessor Indigo Prophecy, however its a new IP which is always a cause for concern to any publisher. Establishing a IP takes time, take a look at Naughty Dogs's Uncharted series. The first one arrived in 2006 and obtained minor sales success, though mainly due to poor sales of the Playstation 3. Last year Among Thieves, the second game in the Uncharted series arrived and failed to complete with sales of a certain game named Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. If Uncharted 2, a sequel many called "Game of the year" with a Metacritic rating of 96 cant sell what chance does Heavy Rain have in today's "lets shoot stuff, over and over again" market?

Video games cost millions to develop and being burnt by poor sales make publishers turn to "playing it safe". Look at EA, they have recently publicly talked about investing in titles that are guaranteed to sell.

Back in the days of Dreamcast Shenmue had the same problem that games like Heavy Rain face. regardless if the critics say Heavy Rain is the second coming of Jesus Christ if the game fails to sell it fails to sell. I find it surprising that its publisher Sony Computer Entertainment would invest in a game like this. I could understand if it was Nintendo with their money to burn, but with poor PSP sales worldwide compared to DS and Playstation 3 only just starting to make money the gaming division of the Japanese giant needs those heavy hitters at retail.

PSP NO?

Its been two weeks since the PSP Go was unleashed on the world, and does anyone really care? PSP as a brand in the west has the same amount of appeal as an Xbox did in Japan before Blue Dragon came along. The system looks great on paper, well except for the over expensive "Minis" (Sony's "take" and I use that word loosely on Apple's iPhone apps), no UMD backward compatibility offer from Sony (Seriously Sony WTF!) and the price (PSP GO 16GB five year old tech £224.99, PS3 120GB Blu Ray 1080p goodness £249.99). I can understand the price due to retailers needing to make a profit on everything they sell but otherwise I just don't get the PSP GO's audience.

It comes down to games when all is said and done, many a system (Sega Saturn, anyone?) has forgotten its games that make a system not hardware. The legal drama around UMD becoming downloadble is surely a headache for Sony. Developers and publishers need to be asked if their games can become downloadable its not down to Sony, afterall the copyright of a PSP game in the past has only covered UMD distribution not digital (except for developers and publishers who have allowed it). God forbid you have a UMD game that has IP in it such as Lego Indy etc, an absolute nightmare.

Personally as a PSP owner from the Japanese Launch of the PSP 1000 (and built up a huge UMD library) its incredibly difficult to have any reason to pick up a GO. Unless gamers are happy to pay again for their games on the Playstation Store I can't see the system gaining any ground on the mega collosus that is Nintendo DS Lite & DSi.

In the mean time if anyone is playing Dissidia: Final Fantasy and lives in Manchester I WANNA BATTLE!