With Nintendo’s massive success with their NES mini, and to a lesser extent, their SNES mini, Sony is entering the “mini” game with the first Playstation, rebranded as the Playstation Classic. While I can see how this might make sense from a limited business perspective, it just seems more of a cash grab than anything else.\u00a0<\/p>\n
So what do I mean about a “cash grab”? If you think about it, the idea of the “mini-console”, outside of it’s obvious nostalgia value, is probably something that’s best targeted at the “casual” gamer. And that’s always been something that Nintendo has always excelled at. And even adding to that, Nintendo probably has more “iconic” IP in their library too.<\/p>\n
I mean, sure, you can be all, “But what about FINAL FANTASY VII?” Which is true, that game is truly iconic. And we all have fond memories of it. But what about replay value? I mean, how many times have you replayed an RPG? With Nintendo, you have SUPER MARIO BROS., METROID, ZELDA… the list goes on, and something you can just pick up and play. Not so much with Playstation’s titles.<\/p>\n
But beyond games, the packaging and design for the Classic is a little weird to me. For instance, there are no memory cards, there are “virtual memory cards” to save your games. But they don’t really explain what “virtual memory” is. Is Sony just trying to make some fancy name for on-board memory? Or is this a Cloud thing? Either way, seems like they’re overcomplicating things here.<\/p>\n
And speaking of overcomplicating things, it won’t come with an AC adapter? Which begs the question, how will it be powered? A HDMI cable is included, but will that power the console? I honestly don’t know if you can power a device though HDMI like you can through a USB cable… so maybe that’s the case? But they don’t explain. So if I have to buy the power adapter separately? Well, that’s just annoying.<\/p>\n
Then comes the console itself. The “reset” button “suspends” games. By\u00a0suspend,\u00a0<\/em>do you mean\u00a0pause\u00a0<\/em>Sony? If so, didn’t the\u00a0start\u00a0<\/em>button pause a game? The the\u00a0open\u00a0<\/em>button changes games… though small issues, it seems like they could’ve done a DVR interface to handle changing games in-game, and yea, “pausing”, use the “start” button.<\/p>\n Personally the “thought” seems to be lacking into what Sony put into the Playstation Classic. Which makes me think this is nothing more than a cash-grab, riding the coattails Nintendo built.<\/p>\n But if you’re still gunning for this, the Playstation Classic will hit December 3rd, and retail for $99.<\/p>\n Are you gonna pick one up?<\/p>\n