Should Sony Turn The PSP Into A Phone?

The portable gaming industry hasn't been faring well as of late, and much of it is because today's smartphones are capable of excellent gameplay, plus you get so much more than just gaming. Can Sony turn its PSP fortunes around by turning it into a phone?Several people at IndustryGamers think that a PSP phone is the way to go. It will be hard to continue as a dedicated gaming platform when vying for the consumer's hard earned money against smartphones today.

A few years ago, it might have made more sense. Even as late as 2007 after the iPhone had shipped, it wasn't really a good gaming platform as there was no App Store that first year. Whatever games that were available were of limited quality compared to what the PSP or Nintendo DS had. Android wasn't out yet and the other smartphone platforms didn't lend themselves to action packed gaming like portable gaming systems did.

If Sony goes this route, it wouldn't be the first company to do so. Nokia tried this with the N-Gage platform in 2003. Here in the US at least, it had very limited success and didn't remain on carrier's shelves very long.

I believe Sony is going about this the wrong way, and any attempt at merging the PSP with a phone will only postpone the inevitable. The problem is not just anyone can develop a PSP game. As with all gaming systems, the PSP is closed, and requires developers to have their game certified for the platform. This keeps quality high as well and prevents content unsuitable for kids from being developed at all. The downside to this is it is more expensive to develop for than it is to just grab a phone's software development kit and write a game from scratch. Submitting to an application store is nothing compared to what goes on with game submission for dedicated systems.

To have an excellent gaming experience, the phone would have to have custom hardware to support extra buttons, and the phone's operation would suggest games first, everything else second. Sony could work with Android to bring this phone about, as has been suggested by some, but I fail to see how they could do so without customizing it so heavily that it would suffer compatibility issues with some regular Android apps. If they did focus on the phone and compatibility, how would that be any different from any other smartphone today?

Both iOS and Android have a decent gaming story today and Windows Phone 7 will show off its stuff next month with its Xbox Live integration. As more and more kids get smartphones, general use with gaming capabilities will be more important than a gaming focus that has a few social media apps on it. Teens and adults will certainly go that direction as well.

Do you think Sony can turn it around, or are portable gaming systems going to be completely replaced by the gaming capable smartphones of today?