From its insurgence the PSP was a portable device of videogame dreams. Console quality graphics on a handheld system was a bonkers idea come to life-and much attention was lavished upon the PSP to be a successful handheld system. Ok so the PSP was never going to topple the Nintendo DS in terms of sales, tech or innovations, but what the PSP lacked in these areas was made up in spades by its vast library of games and the quality to which they presented-taking a PS2-level experience on the go was too good to be true with thrills like this not coming to fruition since GTA went 3D with GTA 3. The PSP lasted a good seven years from 2005-2012 (unless you lived in or imported the PSP from Japan then 2004 was its first year), and in that span gamers were treated to excellent quality videogame experiences.
To start off the PSP UMDs were a flawed but decent enough alternative to other formatting methods. Yes the UMDs could split and become prone to damage, but they worked properly most of the time and they’re far better than an itty bitty cartridge that could get lost between sofa creases. Buying films on a PSP UMD was a very interesting experience too even with the eye-strain, because you can watch some classic films whilst on the toilet or on the commute to work. A portable DVD player might be the more popular choice, but DVDs are easily scratched and they can render the films unplayable-which is less the case with the UMD because the shell these discs were encased in protected them from damage. The arguable failure of the PSP based on just the UMDs alone is highly debatable. You could point at the threadbare battery life, the lack of support from third parties, the matter of the PSP entering the fray around the same time as its leviathan opponent the Nintendo DS, the PSP having only one analogue nub that made playing shooters more difficult as they should be and where developers had to compensate by allowing the face buttons to move the case-oh and maybe the tepid launch of the system that didn’t see its first huge game in Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories release until two months after the system’s launch. But none of these factors can take away from the PSPs excellent library of games-and when push comes to shove all the PSP needed was what it was built for-the games. Where-oh-where to begin with the brilliance of the PSPs library? You have excellent exclusives like God of War’s Chains of Olympus and Ghost of Sparta, two Playstation exclusive portable GTA titles in Liberty City Stories and Vice City Stories, you have quirky and unique titles like Patapon, you have an awesome Rock Band experience with Rock Band: Unplugged, you got LittleBigPlanet, Motorstorm: Arctic Edge, Resistance: Retribution, Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker. Early in the PSPs lifecycle you had some hearty remixed ports of PS2 classics like Def Jam: Fight For New York The Takeover, Tony Hawk’s Underground 2: Remix and NBA Street: Showdown-among many other great games. When it came to games, the PSP offered a tireless armada of portable awesomeness-and all of these made up for the questionable design and technological choices of the PSP because the games were where it mattered most and the PSP nailed it. The PSP may be far from the best designed handheld and its features along with the highly contentious UMD format may have turned heads-but it’s undeniable that when the games came flooding in, many of them were very enjoyable and highly polished, even with the compromises some of them had to make to ensure they satisfied the PSPs limitations. Many things went against the PSP but it satisfied where it mattered with its well-curated library of games-and that’s why the PSP was successful. |
Sony have had two attempts at a portable PlayStation console and neither attempt has translated into particularly strong sales. First up was 2004’s PlayStation Portable (PSP) which while sporting a machine that was as powerful as the PS2 struggled to beat out the direct competition of the Nintendo DS. Second was 2012’s PlayStation Vita (PS Vita) that packed in enough power that whilst not as powerful as the PS3, was certainly not far off, again which failed to beat Nintendo’s offering in the form of the 3DS. Both these platforms though had an extremely impressive set of games and system features. But despite this, was 2004’s PSP a failure?
The answer to that particular question is complicated. For the most part the PSP was an extreme success with some killer exclusives, fantastic ports, and excellent connectivity features to the PS2 & PS3. But the reason why I would consider the PSP a failure is down to one simple reason, and it’s the reason why a lot of people didn’t adopt the device in the first place, Universal Media Discs. Yes, the UMD is the reason why the PSP will, in my eyes, always be a failure. The decision to opt for portable discs rather than cartridge-based media seemed, at the time, a smart option all around. The discs would be cheap to produce, difficult to pirate, and provide tons of storage space for games meaning the PSP could produce home console quality games on the go. It also meant that Sony could market the system as an all-round portable entertainment system. The reality though could not be further from that utopian vision that UMD provided, however. Whilst UMD discs were technically cheap to produce, they were designed and produced by Sony. Much like Blu-Ray a few years later, the initial cost of UMD’s needed to reflect the work that went into creating the format and as such it was not cheap for consumers to buy and wouldn’t be for quite some time. As a result of this high markup, customers were put off by the price of films in particular. Whilst games were not outrageously priced, often being on par with console priced titles, UMD films were significantly more expensive than DVD’s. From a consumer standpoint, it made no sense to adopt a new piece of hardware that also required you to re-buy all your favourite films on a format that’s more expensive than the format you already owned them on, and didn’t even display them as a high a quality. To top this off, the format was exclusively used by the PSP so it’s not even like you could use UMD on any other device, meaning that you were forced to watch films on the PSP’s tiny screen. Instead many consumers who wanted to watch films on the go simply opted for portable DVD players, myself included, as it allowed consumers to watch full quality DVD’s on relatively decent sized screens whilst still being relatively portable due to many not being too much bigger than the DVD itself. On top of this, the UMD’s were prone to getting scratched to the point of becoming non-functional. Despite having a protective shell, the discs would rattle around and it was not uncommon for discs to become scratched during use of the PSP because the device was moved too vigorously. Much like if you move any other device with a spinning disc in it, the laser can scratch the surface of the disc and make it unreadable. This was not all that uncommon with PSP’s. Obviously whilst all disc-based media is prone to these issues, many weren’t specifically marketed as handheld devices that would naturally be moved around constantly. As a result of the protective casing that UMD’s sported, the PSP was also a relatively chunky machine. Whilst certainly not unwieldy, it couldn’t be slimmed down any further than it already was, unlike the Nintendo DS which regularly sported revised editions that made it more compact without losing too many key features. It was also, as a result of having a spinning disc in it, quite a loud machine and vibrated during use. Whilst not a complete deal breaker, when you compare that to Nintendo’s machine that was completely silent and had no moving parts to vibrate the PSP just wasn’t as appealing. All of this could have been fixed by opting for cartridge-based media, much like the PSP’s successor the PS Vita did. The Vita was still a failure, but for completely different reasons that did not play a factor in the design of the PSP. Whilst it’s certainly understandable why Sony opted for discs over cartridges with the PSP much like the PS1 did a decade earlier, the revolution wouldn’t be embraced by technology companies or consumers because unlike the CD, the UMD was new technology that was inferior to the technology it was a rival to. Much like the Blu-Ray vs HD-DVD war that raged just a short while later, the winner was clear from the start and it was that technology that is expensive for consumers and not widely adopted will always loose out. The only other nail in the coffin for the PSP was the price. In comparison to the DS, the PSP was significantly more expensive and technically did less. Sure, it had better looking games and expensive films, but the DS had two screens and touch controls. This meant that games could be played on so many more ways than were previously possible. On top of this the revisions the DS had such as the DSi which included a digital camera to the device meant that the Nintendo DS was opening up to a whole host of other applications beyond gaming; whereas the PSP was just a machine to play games and low-quality films on. I do dearly love the PSP, and its great selection of games. But they are not the reason why the PSP failed. It was all because of the UMD. |