Or why the PSP is dead to me.
http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/blog/23828
I’ve owned a PSP for years. In fact, I’ve owned two: a launch version (sold to me by my brother), and a PSP-2000, which was funded by selling my launch version. Nintendo World Report readers probably don’t know that when the PSP and the DS were first announced, I was of the opinion that Sony’s handheld would dominate the market and quickly sink Nintendo’s new device. My rationale was simple: the PSP had a big, sexy screen, PS2-quality visuals, and functioned as a multi-purpose media platform. My thoughts on the DS largely amounted to “it’s a GBA with a second screen.” The launch model was also ugly and bulky—nowhere near as attractive (in terms of form) as the sleeker, blacker PSP. Well, we all know what happened next: the DS skyrocketed into the sales stratosphere where it has continued to stay ever since whereas the PSP has never actually been a big seller, or even a marginally big seller. As time goes by, I have become intimately familiar with the PSP’s many flaws, and it has many. Before I dive into the bad, however, let’s talk about the few things the PSP gets right.
First, there are some very high-profile, excellent games on the PSP: Mega Man Powered UP, Maverick Hunter X, Monster Hunter Freedom Unite, Castlevania: Dracula X Chronicles, Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, Patapon, Patapon 2, God of War: Chains of Olympus (which will soon—finally—get a sequel), and Assassin’s Creed: Bloodlines to name a few. These are all games I treasure, although I can’t shake the feeling that most of them could’ve been downloadable PSN titles. Also of some importance, the PSP makes good use of its giant widescreen format to display really crisp, colorful, and impressive graphics.
Second, the PSP really is a multimedia device. It plays UMD movies, although they aren’t really produced anymore. It plays music from a memory card, internet radio, and Skype. If you want to play your PSP games on the big screen, you can do that with the right cables. You can remote-play some PSN PS3 games (but not nearly enough), and you can access the PS3’s menu crossbar from the PSP. A word of caution, however: playing the Patapon games on your TV results in game-ruining lag between when you tap the drum button and when it actually registers. For any other game, it’s not even noticeable. But for Patapon, it makes you lose.
That’s about it. Now let’s go for the throat.
The first, and most egregious offender is the PSP’s prehistoric operating system. It’s sort of a low-res version of the PS3’s crossbar with far fewer options. Its biggest flaw is that you cannot do anything in the background. On the PS3, you can download like eight different things at once (aside from firmware updates) in the background and still play Uncharted 2 in the foreground or continue wandering around the PSN Store. The PSP does not allow such luxury. If you want to download Patapon 2, you’re gonna have to sit there and watch its progress bar slowly fill up. You can’t play a game while you wait. You can’t even zoom out to the menu screen. You are forced to actually set your PSP down and play your DS instead while Castlevania Chronicles downloads at the speed of smell.
I wasn’t sure whether this is an OS problem or not, but the PSP’s web browser is worse than most cell phones. It is a useless exercise in tedium to try and load up your email, for example, because the page loads at the speed of a 28k modem. At least half the time, the connection will time out OR the system will run out of memory before a single word has appeared onscreen. Merely loading up the page’s background makes the PSP have a seizure. More strenuous activities, like clicking links, have actually caused my little system to crash, shutting itself off with a disturbing “pop” sound, as if one of its silicon synapses just short-circuited. The only internet pages that display property and with some modicum of speed are those that have mobile versions like Kotaku or Facebook. But in the case of the former, clicking a link to see some screenshots often results in a five-minute load followed by images displayed “at reduced quality” to conserve memory.
Let’s talk about the battery life. It’s awful. It’s less reliable while playing UMD movies than an iPod Video. My PSP-2000 came with a Family Guy compilation disk, which included four of Seth McFarlane’s favorite episodes (circa 2007). The battery will be on its last bar when that UMD is over, and that’s with the backlight on “medium.” Turn that **** up to “high,” and you can forget about watching a UMD or playing a frigging game during a plane ride—it ain’t gonna last. The battery also takes forever to charge, even though there’s clearly not much juice in the first place! And hilariously, the charging cable is like fifty feet long and unnecessarily divided into two parts: one with the power supply, and one that connects the power supply to the PSP itself. Do you know what kind of a hassle it is to pack something like that? Supposedly there’s an adaptor that lets players use their launch PSP’s battery on later versions, but you know what? I sold my launch PSP, Sony, so I could afford your “better” version.
Another point of contention? The system’s physical architecture. I speak now of the PSP-2000, which I currently own, although some of these complaints carry over to the launch version, too, and probably the PSP-3000. To begin with, the analog nub is a useless, useless device. It cramps the hand and fails to offer the kind of precise analog control one would get with a real analog stick. It’s also surprisingly easy for your thumb to begin drifting toward the edge of the nub, further hindering your efforts. Developers don’t seem to care, and they continue to make games that demand extensive use of this blasted thing. Even worse, developers continue to imagine that there’s a good way around the whole lack of a second analog nub. There’s not. If you want proof, check out the demo of that recent Resistance PSP game. The best PSP games ignore the nub entirely. I also can’t stand the placement of the power switch. It is literally encased in the meat of my hand as my thumb grasps the face buttons and my index finger gropes the R button. The slightest sudden movement causes the switch to slide upward, resulting in sleep mode. This is an asinine design decision. It has happened to me more than once.
But the most frustrating aspect of the PSP isn’t even the system’s fault: it’s Sony’s utter refusal to upgrade it in a meaningful way or even acknowledge that there’s a problem. It’s not like they’re flooding the market with quality games. LittleBigPlanet and Peace Walker are the only notable PSP releases in almost the last year. They keep changing the system’s physical architecture, but they never change the OS or everyday functionality outside of firmware updates that nobody cares about. Last year, they launched the PSP Go, which sold poorly, largely because gamers understood that it was more expensive but actually decreased core functionality (no more UMD support and no plans to digitize the entire PSP game library). Thanks but no thanks, Sony. Way to miss the goddamn point. At this year’s E3, everybody expected them to roll out the PSP 2.0, but instead they brought in…that black kid from Role Models and a new marketing campaign to revitalize the rotting corpse of the current PSP.