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Sony Playstation Portable Portable PlayStation, or PSP, is Sony's first attempt in the handheld market. It represents the first major competition against Nintendo’s reign of the portable gaming genre. But is it worth the hype or is it just another piece of over-priced electronic by the industry giant?
Most will fall in love as soon as laying eyes on the PSP. It is wonderfully designed, contoured and slick shining black. The device is ergonomically curved with two medium outward arcs on each end, which fit into your palms with four face buttons laid out easy to reach. All the controls work well and feel very high quality; however, one main thing people will notice immediately is the beautiful widescreen TFT LCD. A lot of thoughts and energies have been injected into designing this system, and it shows. Weighing essentially the same as the Nintendo DS (6.2 ounces, including removable battery) and measuring 6.7 by 2.9 by 0.9 inches (WHD), the body feels well built and solid in your hand. The system may seem fragile with all its high tech parts, the overall physical design still feels well built and quite sexy at the same time. In the end, it’s comfortable to hold and nice to look at, an excellent entry for Sony Computer Entertainment Inc into the handheld gamine scene.
The system packs duel MIPS-4000 processors each going at 333 MHz, and 2 graphics processors (one for effects and one 166 MHz core for the graphics). To make it even better the PSP has a dedicated sound core and video decoder, not to mention over 32 Megs of system RAM and 4 Megs of DRAM. The PSP utilizes Sony's proprietary Universal Media Disk, or UMD, which holds 1.8 gigabytes of memory that leaves lots of room for hi-res textures, sounds, and FMVs. Other technical features include an impressive 4.3-inch wide-screen display (480x272 pixels, 16.77 million colors), 802.11b wireless networking, infrared and USB 2.0 port, headphone jack, single analog stick, and memory stick duo slot. Since the device has a glossy finish--and is mostly black--it is a fingerprint magnet. To help keep your PSP clean, Sony throws in a small cloth for wiping purposes. A padded slipcase is also included, but a variety of third-party versions are also available. The PSP comes with a built in MP3 and ATRAC player, MPEG 4 decoder, and photo viewer. The impressive 4.3-inch TFT LCD with a 480x272-pixel resolution and 16.77 million colors outshines each of the Nintendo DS's two screens has 256x192 pixels with 260,000 colors. The picture quality from a UMD such as Spider-Man 2 is comparable if not superior to what you'll see on most portable DVD players, though the most portable DVD players have significantly larger screens. This is just one of many small features that make the PSP great, from adjustable brightness to its battery-saving sleep-mode, the PSP can be more than a gaming device; it is the Swiss army knife of portable gaming. With over ten launch titles there is no doubt that the PSP has a strong start. However the UMD games do require longer loading time (some up to a minute depending on the game and level), and drain battery life like no other. Luckily the graphics of the games are almost PS2 quality, some even with Wi-Fi competition modes built in (up to 8 players can compete head-to-head on Namco's Ridge Racer). In the end the first wave of PSP games look amazing, which almost guarantees a revolution in handheld gaming graphics in the near future. The PSP is an astoundingly good portable gaming system and a wonderful first entry for Sony. It not only raises the bar for handheld gaming, but also gives the industry the jolt it needed to push into the next level. Nintendo, the ball is in your court now, what are you going to do? At $249.99 the PSP is a good buy for game enthusiasts, although others may want to wait until the holiday season when it inevitably drops in price in order to compete with the big N. |
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