HTC has been ‘confirmed’ by an insider source as the first among handset manufacturers outside of Sony to receive Playstation Suite certification. It means that HTC phones will soon be able to run Playstation classics like Ridge Racer.
But does it signpost the failure of HTC’s $40 million investment in OnLive? And will yet another service, piled on top of a myriad other, turn the company’s fortunes around? Read on for our thoughts.
Putting the Playstation experience on other phones “expands the PlayStation experience beyond the PSP border. It is the first cross-platform endeavour,” said then SCEE CEO Kaz Hirai. Sony’s wisened up to the fact that not everyone has both a Playstation and a PSP or PS Vita. And that not everyone has a Playstation 3.
That awareness and ethos of branching out has been echoed by the Sony Entertainment Network boss Tim Schaaff: “If I own a Sony Playstation device but I don’t have a Sony handset, does that mean I can’t use the music service when I leave my home?
“The reality is I’ve got to enable a kind of connected experience that spans where customers really move in their life. it’s probably not reasonable at this point in time to target a segment of customers who are all pure Sony from start to finish.”
It’s a very blunt, admirably open way of doing things – one which has ended up with HTC becoming a future benefactor of said Playstation goodness. But my reservation with the whole thing is that HTC seems to be jumping from one service to another in an aim to stay afloat.
Remember when HTC became a major OnLive backer? OnLive still exists and is doing reasonably well, but I don’t think the same can be said for the mobile service championed by HTC’s Android devices. The backing that HTC put in was a huge $40 million investment – one which you’d think it’d be wanting to see through to the bitter end.
Jumping on the Playstation wagon says one of two things, though. Either HTC is just going to give up on OnLive, or it’s going to have both in an effort to continually load up its phones with endless services like so much ice cream in a tiny cone. Both scenarios are worrying.
The former – that OnLive has ceased to be HTC’s flavour of the month – is worrying for OnLive’s mobile reach. It’s already been dealt a severe blow by Apple, who’s still yet to approve the OnLive app. If HTC abandons support, it could be one of many potential coffin nails.
The latter is more worrying though. HTC’s bouncing around from service to service like it really doesn’t know what it’s doing. In terms of hardware, HTC has basically admitted that it can no longer really compete. The HTC Sensation XL is a flagship phone with middling specs. It brought a single-core processor to a dual-core party.
The logic is obvious: if you can’t turn around world-beating handsets, fill them to the brim with services. That’s why HTC backed OnLive so strongly at the start. That’s why HTC Watch was developed.
It’s why the company has just signed a huge deal with Dropbox and it’s exactly why it’s the only handset manufacturer making Beats branded smartphones.
Android’s deadly middle ground that could kill HTC
It’s kind of admirable. If handsets are reaching a specs plateau, the winner will obviously be the phone with the best user experience through various apps. But there’s a sense with HTC that it just doesn’t know what to do.
I get the impression that, off the back of a recent sales slump, the company is just signing up to everything in sight in a state of panic.
Which leads us back to the Playstation certification. Any other manufacturer? I’d be really excited. With HTC I worry that adding the Playstation’s range of games and services will come as more of a desperate stab in the dark than a carefully thought-out, market-leading feature.
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I’m keen to be proved wrong, of course. But the salient facts are these: HTC is in a bit of a crisis when it comes to hardware, it seems to be first to jump on emerging services that almost always amount to not very much, and it now wants to bet the farm on the Playstation, when in fact Sony is likely to start shifting the Playstation license about to everyone.
I’d love to know if you disagree, but from where I’m standing this new acquisition isn’t going to be quite the game-changer that HTC’s accountants might hope it’ll be.
Via Pocket-Lint
