PSP Go Review Quote
I've been reading through the reviews of the Sony PSP Go, and while many voiced many of the concerns similar to what I posted a few days ago, I came across this one quote that really jumped out at me.
When you hold a Zune HD, the thing seems to be carved from the future itself. When you hold the PSPgo, it feels like a free-with-contract tween's phone.
~ Mark Wilson, Gizmodo Editor
So there it sits pretty clear as dirt. I personally love my first generation PSP. Its a beautiful machine that is breaths technology, but ever since then every incarnation of the PSP series has been about fighting piracy and making the device feel cheaper and cheaper. Sony has all but admitted that the jacked up price was so that they could entice retailers to even carry the device. Personally I hope this acts as a wake up call to the PSP team.
The Playstation without the Play
Next week Sony will be releasing its diskless variation of the Playstation Portable series. With the PSPGo Sony is hoping to unburden itself with the horrible choice of including an optical disk drive on a portable system. The problem is this one move has the potential to invalidate the purchases of an estimated 55 million users who have already purchased one the system’s previous incarnations and the software titles to go with it.
I’ve heard of removing backwards compatibility (Sony seems to be mastering that concept of late) but to remove current generation compatibility from a system would seem like a death sentence. In the end they have created a device that is not compatible with the millions of units of software sold around the world, and cost more than any other version without any physical update besides form factor. I cannot see a reasonable reason that any customer new or returning would want this device. New users can get the regular PSP for less, and existing users have no reason to buy one since it cannot play any of the game they already own. Even more of a concern is the longevity of such a system, being built on an already aging hardware, this is clearly only a move to try and milk the last bit of money out of consumers in this console's end of life cycle.
Unless Sony can make it possible for users to painlessly transfer their games to the PSP Go without the lost of the physical media, I fear this new version will suffer a dark fate. I can see it now, a brand new shiny PSP Go stocked right next to a wall of game that the system cannot even play. I mean it’s like Nintendo releasing the DSi without a DS cartridge slot.