PlayStation "minis"

[JP]

Couldn't see a thread for this and thought it may be worth mentioning.

minis is basically Sony's version of Apple's Apps for the iPhone. There will be 15 games available at launch with a total of 50 available by the end of 2009 in Europe.

The minis have a size restriction of 100MBs and will only be available via download.

Although some of the games that have been announced are already available on the iPhone Sony state that they are wanting to avoid the amateur developers that flood the the iPhone with stuff. Bigger developers such as EA, Konami & Namco are already creating games as well as quite a few smaller studios.

There's been no mention of price yet as far as I know but they're going to have to keep the iPhone games at a similar price to the App Store really.

I feel there's quite a few iPhone games which will really benefit from having proper controls and I'd certainly be willing to buy them again for the PSP if the price was OK.

The minis development process has been designed to open the door to a broad range of developers to encourage new talent and creative ideas to PSP. minis are being developed by some of the most creative studios from across the globe from GameShasta, a medium-sized development team based in India, to HoneySlug a three-man team in Camden, London. Some developers, such as Creat, have already created content for PlayStation Network; others, such as Subatomic Studios. are bringing their experience in the mobile phone market to PSP.

[Family Fry]

The first three games shown on that video are from Halfbrick Studios, shown in order are.

Halfbrick Blast Off
Halfbrick Zombies (Zombies are the new black this year!)
Halfbrick Echoes

2 of those awesome games are currently available on XBL under Indie Games (zombies isnt out yet) Was nice to see them in this video, they will make excellent additions as a handheld product. Just the type of games thats suits this type of platform.
Colour me interested in Minis as PSN/XBLA/Wii Ware stuff always impresses me, to have another platform to play these games on gets the thumbs up and playing.

[JP]

Didn't realise that, I'm downloading the demos now. Cheers!

I notice these are 200 & 240 points on Live, does that work out a couple of quid or so? They're really going to have to get the price of these games right though, I'v spent a bloody fortune of iPhone games that cost 59p and I could imagine myself doing the same on the PSP if the price is OK.

I'm not really sure what I feel about Sony's idea of not wanting amateurs making games to be honest. At first I didn't like the idea but having thought about it I think it may be best the dev kits are a little to expensive for everybody but still let really small studios like Halfbrick produce these sorts of games.

What do other people think. Is it good or bad?

[Family Fry]

Halfbrick Echoes is a cool game
MSP to pounds value is apparently, 200=?1.70 and 240=?2.04.

Halfbrick are a full sized studio, these games are what they call Halfbrick Friday games, in halfbricks own words.

"This is the day we celebrate the launch of our new casual games brand, Halfbrick Fridays! With the concept of "casual friday" being popular with anyone in the workforce, we've branded our games to embrace this fun-filled spirit. Whenever our development teams grab some spare time among the nooks and crannies of the usual workweek, they grind out some fantastic original IPs and turn them into full-fledged games."

Bloody great idea if you ask me.

As for the smaller studios maybe the games may work better on a handheld, iphone does have games but the interface must be a swine sometimes with only a touch screen, kinda makes onscreen dpads a bit awkward/distracting.
Know I would rather play something like a 2D platformer on psp than iphone if I had the option. Plus its all about choice as well no longer will these halfbrick games be on XBLive and not really selling that well, PSP opens them up to an entire new audience and more sales.

[JP]

SCEE Introduction to minis for anybody that's interested.

[wakka]

What do other people think. Is it good or bad?

Good. The iPhone is flooded with rubbish, particularly when it comes to games. So much so that I can never even be bothered to sift through the iTunes app store. God forbid a fart app should become available for PSP -_-

[JP]

That's what I'm hoping but I'm also hoping that the ?1200 dev kit doesn't get in the way of people at home who may be just starting up but have a lot to offer the platform. It''s really too early to judge at the moment but I'm looking forward this starting.

I'm hoping that the cost will stop people from developing endless stuff that are just collections of farts, gun shots & laughter. I can understand why people just starting up may just want to have a play so produce stuff like this but it just seems endless now.

[JP]

Details on a couple of the Minis on the way including a Kahoots preview.

FIELDRUNNERS

[Ajay1986]

Fieldrunners is much more suited to the iPhone touchscreen, also it looks like the PSP version is missing the new towers that are in the iPhone version.

[JP]

A few more details...

Real Soccer 2010 - the famous handheld soccer simulation arrives on the PSP(R)go system. Get immersed in the atmosphere of a live match thanks to true to life 3D graphics and animation. Discover a complete range of game modes and easily perform the most amazing soccer moves.

Hero of Sparta - an epic and colossal adventure with staggering 3D graphics that fully capture the mythological atmosphere. 8 levels to explore and legions of phenomenal creatures to defeat in this odyssey.

Asphalt 5 - a high velocity driving game with more than 15 million downloads sold. Ride the best cars in the world including Ferrari and Lamborghini in high-speed races through 15 of the hippest locations in the world from Paris to Aspen.

Let's Golf! - It's time for you to become a big hitter and drive for the green with Let's Golf! Choose to play with 4 cool and customizable characters across 63 holes in 4 distinct locations remodeled in refreshing 3D visuals from Fiji Beach to the English countryside.

UNO (TM) - play the #1 classic card game with friends and family on your PSP(R)go system. Enjoy traditional UNO(TM) or customize your own game with 9 different rules to play your way. Challenge friends near and far through local and online multiplayer mode.

This is a hands on with Hero of Sparta which was fun on the iPhone but is one of teh many games that will benefit from having workable controls and being able to see the screen.

Sony may have set the pace for Greek mythology-based hack and slash-'em-ups with God of War, but the iPhone has hardly been lounging around in a toga during it's meteoric rise to the status of handheld gaming darling.

Hero of Sparta is one of many Gameloft titles that was lumbered with the unenviable task of blowing raspberries at the PSP's graphical prowess when it was released. It's not like Gameloft's effort really had a chance of replicating the depth and quality of Sony's prize thug, but it established that the iPhone was no shrinking violet when it came to throwing down.

Cut to a year later and we are sat comfortably within the confines of Gameloft's booth in the business centre at GamesCom in Cologne, happily playing through the first level of Hero of Sparta on a PSPgo.

It's hardly unexpected that the game benefits hugely from the satisfying tactile feedback of real buttons. Though the build we played was an early one, the inclusion of buttons does highlight some issues that were perhaps masked in the iPhone version.

Scenery is prone to stickiness, an issue that the iPhone's ill-fitting and occasionally unruly interface appeared to be responsible for. It seems that the touchscreen analogue stick may not have been to blame, after all.

Even so, the scenery's stickiness is not so frequent or stubborn as to prove fatal, and movement is generally reasonably fluid using the analogue nub. Indeed, hacking and slashing feels more definite, the combos more deliberate, and the enemies' skill level appeared to have been beefed up to compensate for players that will no doubt perform better on this more familiar ground.

Visually, the game has never looked better. The occasional slowdown that cropped up in the iPhone version is entirely absent and the extra screen size really affords a squint free view of the action.

That said, with the ability to draw such direct comparisons, the fact that this game was crafted for a mobile platform is all the more evident on the PSP's glorious screen and it's placement within the PSP Minis range, as opposed to on a (presumably) more expensive shelf in the PSP Store, is wise.

In the din of the business centre, it was hard to determine if the much maligned sound effects have been improved. With the game already clocking in at 88.8MB on the App Store, the PSP Minis cap of 100MB doesn't leave much extra space for tarting up in this area.

Ultimately, however, this is still the Hero of Sparta we enjoyed playing last Christmas, and with the extra precision afforded by the PSP's array of buttons, there's no reason why this shouldn't be a cracking addition to the PSP Minis range. Look out for a review in October

Phone developer CobraMobile - they of Low Grav Racer and iBomber fame - has today released information concerning its forthcoming PSP Minis titles.

According to Mark Ettle, "Our PSP Mini games are adapted versions of our existing classics to really harness the playability and form factor of the PSP."

The first three Minis titles from the studio will be Numba, goBomber and Cobi Treasure. Numba is a version of the excellent iPhone puzzle game of the same name, while goBomber will be an adaptation of the aforementioned iBomber.

Cobi Treasure, meanwhile, "will see Starfish Al and Sally the Seahorse make their long awaited handheld debuts." That's what it says here, anyway.

Cobra is aiming for a autumn or winter release for its first batch of Minis games. Hopefully there'll be many more where they came from.

Must.Eat.Birds was a really good game so it's good to see the developer signed up to make new games foe the PSP.

Sony's lost the plot when it comes to pricing its hardware, but there's no denying that it's creating a real stir among the game development community with its new line of 'Minis' due to shore up the PSPgo's app store (although it's not an app store (even though it clearly is)).

Anyway, UK-based social gaming specialist and developer of the surreal and deliciously entertaining iPhone game Must.Eat.Birds, Mediatonic, has just announced its intentions to create games for the PSP's online store.

"Signing up with Sony to work on the PSPGo platform is immensely exciting for us," explains Mediatonic's creative director Paul Croft. "Having dipped our toes in the water with Must.Eat.Birds on the iPhone, we're thrilled to be adding the PSP Go to our ranks - and we'll be designing original games specifically for the platform and its online delivery system."

Details on Mediatonic's first PSP title will be announced shortly, and it's worth pointing out that they'll be just as playable on the older PSP models, of course.

[fishbowlhead]

Proper controls are great and all, but these iphone games can be had for like 60p on the iphone, im sure psp store will charge significantly more.

One game i would like proper controls for is zenonia, fantastic little game that is, i cant play if for long however as my hands cramp to the point of having to stop

[Brad]

Thousands of crap 59p games! Yay! Seriously, you can only play so many games so having fewer, yet (hopefully) better games with a higher price point is fine with me. Those with ADD may prefer the AppStore model though!

[JP]

I'm hoping that they charge more there's increasing criticism of how wrong Apple have got the pricing on the App store.

It started off fine but it very quickly bottomed out and now developers are finding that 59p is the expected price for consumers. A lot of the recent feedback is that if developers price their game above 59p then people don't buy them but if they price them at 59p there is so much stuff out there that the vast majority of it gets ignored irrelevant of the quality.

PopCap had a go at Apple recently with this happening with Peggle as they were selling it at a higher price but nobody was buying so they experimented with a sale price of 59p and it was at the top of the charts straight away. It wasn't such a problem for them but a smaller studio would probably not be able to pay for the development at that price.

The prices must be higher and also sustainable, Apple's prices are brilliant but only in teh short term. Hopefully the higher prices and the more expensive dev kit will prevent much of the crap and mean that studios have a decent chance of making a profit.

[JP]

A new trailer which shows the Halfbrick games including Rocket Racer.

[Brickman]

Hey guys! I was just doing my rounds on the intertrons when I actually discovered this thread and forum. I'm the communtiy manager at Halfbrick, and definitely like to get involved and answer questions from anyone who may be interested in our games, so I look forward to becoming more involved in this community.

You can check updates at www.halfbrick.com, but I should be posting pretty frequently on here (both as a gamer and a developer!)

On topic, here is an interesting article I came across this morning:

http://www.develop-online.net/features/606/QA-Sony-on-PSP-Minis