johng Blog

Sony’s strategy of making the UK and Europe wait an insanely long time for its new portable system has clearly paid off. By launching the PSP in the UK almost a year after its initial Japanese launch and suing anyone who dares to import them they built enough up enough momentum to shift 185,000 units in the first four days. By comparison Nintendo did 87,000 consoles when the DS launched earlier in the year, which at the time was considered a landmark figure.

Initially I was surprised by the figure but when we look at the launch it’s clear how this number was accomplished. The system’s short comings are well documented including horrible battery life, expensive low capacity memory and many units shipped ridden with dead pixels. But by sandwiching the console into two camps, part games system, part media player they have drawn the early adopters from both areas and the general gadget freaks also.

So 185,000 isn’t as crazy as it sounds but by making the PSP a ‘jack of all trades’ it has become lackluster in all the areas it has taken a stab at. The media player aspect is frankly shocking. We are expected to buy all our movies again in UMD format when the DVDs we have are of higher quality, with more features and less expensive. On the audio side this is not the iPod rival Sony claim it to be, they are selling 1GB memory sticks for almost ¬£100 in UK stores which makes it an impractical and expensive competitor.

As for the games (don’t forget this is a games console also) it would be easy to think you were looking at the PS2’s line up looking down the list of launch titles. With Ridge Racer as the top selling game in the UK it doesn’t fill me with confidence that the system will deliver quality original gaming experiences not already available on the PS2.

Don’t expect the PSP to innovate or invigorate the portable gaming and portable media markets as sadly it fall short in both areas. Instead expect it to do well living in the safe land of mediocrity by defacto, proving that it truely deserves the Playstation name.