Written on Jul 21st, 2006 by Dave

Posted In: Sony PSP News

PSP Dead? Probably Not

You may have stumbled across an article written on one of the larger gaming networks about how the PSP is nearly dead, and a few articles elsewhere about how the it should be dead even if its not quite there yet.

I been reading through a few of these articles, and to be honest, I’m left partly agreeing with some of the points made, and at the same time disagreeing strongly with the overall message they are giving out.

Yes the PSP does have some real problems to deal with - its price, the UMD format, the constant attempts by Sony to lock down the product to stop homebrew, the lack of any real ground breaking games, the continual additions to the functionality of the PSP via firmware updates that should have been there from day one.

But like most things, this isn’t the full story. The PSP has sold 20+ million units worldwide since its launch. I wouldn’t call this a small number, although obviously not as many as the DS has sold. Of course, the PSP is often compared to Nintendo’s little portable gaming device, and the sales comparison is always used as a yard stick to measure how good the systems are. Personally, I don’t see much relevance in comparing the two, because other than the fact they both play games, the devices are not that similar. A better comparison would be with the GP32X which ha ssimila rfunctions to the PSP.

But I digress. The PSP gaming library is growing all the time, and the number of titles that are now becoming available that are quite innovative or just downright good fun to play is getting better and better. Games such as LocoRoco are suddenly taking PSP gaming in a new and unique direction. Ok, there are plenty of PS2 style ports of games that have been around for years, but when some of these games are very good (Grand Theft Auto for example), this isn’t that bad a thing.

Its unfortunate that the number of available innovative games for the PSP on launch was so limited, and its taken so long for developers to get their products out for the system, but now that they are finally coming to market, hopefully the negative press the gaming side of the PSP gets will start to fade away.

The UMD format, for films at least, looks to be disappearing. Is this a bad thing? - not really, plenty has been said about the UMD format and the problems of trying to sell films on it, so I won’t go on about it here, but suffice to say that the number of films I own on UMD is 2, and its unlikely to get any bigger.

I could talk about the popularity of homebrew on the PSP, but I still believe the volume of people who use, or even understand, PSP homebrew is so small in comparison to the number of units sold that it has little impact of sales of the PSP. Homebre wis one of the things I love about the PSP though, and I look at it as bonus content for the device above and beyond what Sony wants me to use on it.

Is the PSP dying? I don’t believe so. Is the PSP going to die? Yes, at some point it will be replaced by something new, but not in the forseeable future. Should you buy one? If you want a stylish gaming device that can also play movies, listen to music, surf the web, browse through photos (and soon be able to take photos), stream music from your PC, listen to shoutcast radio stations, emulate many consoles and portable gaming devices, has the support of many software developers who will never get paid, and is fun to use, then yes.