ngmoco Boss: NGP "Dead on Arrival", 3DS is "Gimmicky"
by Nicholas Taylor, posted on 07 March 2011 / 10,526 Views
Neil Young, the boss of ngmoco, a publisher mostly known for making games for the iPhone and Android phones, has predicted that Sony's new portable system, the NGP, will be "dead on arrival", and also said that the Nintendo 3DS is "gimmicky".
In an interview at the latest Game Developer's Conference, Young said that “I think PSP is done and the new [NGP] is dead on arrival,” and followed up by saying that “It’s really difficult to compete with an app store that has hundreds of thousands of applications and a wide range of options where the average price paid is around $1.20 and there are tens, if not hundreds of thousands of free applications that are really high quality.”
“So I just don’t think Sony’s going to be able to compete with that.” he concluded. As for the 3DS, he said it was "gimmicky", but that Nintendo's "great franchises" would help the console. “I think Nintendo will likely be competitive. My personal opinion is that the 3D piece of the puzzle is kind of gimmicky,” he said.
“But Nintendo has great franchises and there are tens of millions of people who want to participate in those franchises, so that always helps… But the real question is the degree to which there’s a third-party community.”
Sony's NGP will be releasing this holiday season in Japan, and supposedly, though not certainly, other regions as well. The Nintendo 3DS has already launched in Japan, and will launch on March 25th in Europe and March 27th in North America.
