The Lamer Gamer

Read a little more on Gamespot about the PSP Go, which is of course NOT the PSP2.

Before I get too fired up about how little I feel your $250 is buying you, there is mention of some Sony good will program to let you get digital copies of games you already purchased on UMD.  If that’s true, I won’t feel like I’m getting ripped on the whole no UMD thing.  I’ve already stated that I’m not a fan of UMD, but I still like physical media for games.  I rent a lot, and having no physical media is already a downer in that way.

Okay, so on to the bitching.  The new form factor is nice, but if I’m reading all this right, nothing other than the 16GB storage and Bluetooth have been added to the internals.  So for $250, I’m looking at a smaller screen which I figure ought to reduce the price, the internal storage, which ought to run about $30 retail, and Bluetooth which shouldn’t be more than a few dollars since that’s typically integrated into the wireless chipset.   Since I haven’t  heard anything about significant firmware updates, I have to assume that there won’t be any, and it’s essentially just going to be running the same stuff that the you’ve got on the PSP-1000/2000/3000 and that’s the biggest disappointment.

The PSP firmware is really bad.  That’s why people spend so much time writing extensions to it.  I can’t charge it via USB while playing a game, the browser sucks, and I’m going to keep wondering why I can’t listen to an MP3 while doing anything else on the damned thing, or maybe why the RSS reader only lets you play media and not read text.

So what the hell am I buying anyway?  Even Sony doesn’t think it’s a true “upgrade” from the PSP-3000 and plans to sell both concurrently. presumably until there is such a thing as the PSP2.  Until I hear different, I can’t figure why I’d need it.

CNet has a whole mess of info on the rumored PSP Go.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10252808-1.html

Can Sony not hear me?  A new PSP without 2 analog sticks is not a great improvement!  Not to mention that this supposed new model will have a smaller screen (3.8″ vs the current 4.3″).  Placement of the analog stick looks way bad too.  I’ve never liked the placement of the analog sticks on the PS2 or PS3, an it looks like their making what I’d consider the same mistake on this new model.  The analog is essentially moved too far to the center of the unit such that I have to position my thumb almost laterally to get at it while holding the unit.

One other enhancement I’d love to see is have the power button moved away from the side of the unit.  I often find that I bump it and put the unit to sleep during intense in-game situations.

All that said, I like the new slide design, compact is better.  While I always appreciate backwards compatibility, I can’t say that I’m going to miss the UMD discs, and you sort of had to see that coming once UMD Video discs tanked in the last year or so.