Sony whacks Go!Messenger service for PSP

Quite why Sony wasted so much time and effort on stuff like this for the PSP (and the PS3) when all anybody really wanted was a fuck-load of brilliant games, I have no idea.

“Although it proved a popular concept, achieving a significant number of registrations, it didn’t gain the number of regular users that BT and SCEE were aiming for.”

Ergo, it wasn’t really a popular concept, then, surely?

PR bollox translated for free.

ihaveplacedabetonthisstorylol

What’s the bet – that this thread will receive more comments than Go!Messenger had regular users?

Quite why Sony wasted so much time and effort on stuff like this for the PSP (and the PS3) when all anybody really wanted was a fuck-load of brilliant games, I have no idea.

It doesn’t really work like that, does it? It’s not like they had all their game divisions making this messenger instead of making games.

I think it already has.

@ecu: Well, no – but there’s a limited pot of funding for stuff. I’m pretty sure most people would’ve quite happily left stuff like this and PlayTV if they’d have been promised an extra triple-A blockbuster instead.

Maybe they’ll just do the smart thing now and add Skype compatibility like they did in the US.

Which is exactly what they should have done in the first place.

Yes this turned out to be a failure but it doesn’t mean they shouldn’t have tried it. Do you think having 2 screens on a handheld instead of putting the research funding into games was a bad move for Nintendo? How about allowing voice chat cross game/activity or any other XBL feature instead of allowing the money to go to more games was a bad decision for Microsoft? or any other feature that is on a console that took time, effort and money to research and develop.

The fact is companies have to try these things, sometimes they fail somtimes they succeed.

Well, yeah – but all those things were actually somehow related to gaming.

@Blerk, true but there are also things like Video Marketplace (XBL and PSN), messenger integration and video chat on XBL, inclusion of a Blu-ray drive in PS3 (DVD playback in PS2), Miis/Avatars/Home, web browser on consoles, etc which all arent directly linked to gaming but money was spent on them. Some were riskier than others and some have succeeded more than others.

My thoughts, exactly. Despite Sony’s efforts to turn the poor old PSP into an all-singing all-dancing multi-media wonderthing, people (in the Western market at least) just seemed to want something they could play bloody games on.

And to have enough decent games to play on it.

Captian fruitloop, even you are wrong.

People DON’T want games to play. They want digital books, wants recipes, they want brain training.

Not a lot of people every got involved in the whole handheld thing other than Japan. And there the PSP is doing fine.

I don’t think it was a waste of time, becuase that kind of functional space is where the PSP should be in the Western mindset, so it was a good idea, VERY poorly executed.

I agree with PUD… and to be honest, that makes me feel a little dirty.

/bleaches