The new, UMD-less PSP Go is an absolute dream for Sony. Since it lacks a way to play games purchased at retail, Sony gets to set the prices for every piece of content bought on the system. Who cares if the store down the street has a game for $10 cheaper? You can only get your games from one place; competition with discounting and used games is gone. Sony will now be selling you every game that goes into the Go's 16GB of storage, and without the ability to buy or sell used games, Sony now owns every single piece of the market with this system. And without an easy way to switch the battery for hacking purposes, piracy won't be as easy.
Like we said, the PSP Go is great for Sony. For the rest of us, retailers included, not so much.
We bought our system at retail, and there was no line, no risk of a sellout, and no signage or posters in the store hyping the system. It was the most mellow system launch you'll find in this business. The unboxing was impressive, and it's easy to be impressed with how sexy and sleek the PSP Go looks. But now that we've had a day or so to play with it, it's clear that Sony's new portable is nothing but raw deal after raw deal. The complaints are numerous, the slights against consumers are many, and the hardware is flawed. On top of these issues is a price point that's so high it seems like a sick joke in the current economy. The PSP is a great system and a strong platform. The PSP Go is a terrible, terrible deal for everyone but Sony.
The Go's screen is smaller: 3.8" instead of the 4.3" of the older PSP models. The resolution remains the same, however, at 480x272. The action when you slide the screen up to reveal the controls is smooth, and that screen is a dream to play games on. There is no argument to be found about aesthetics; on the surface this is one of the best-looking pieces of consumer electronics out there.
You better have small hands
The PSP Go is surprisingly comfortable in your hands when you're simply holding it, but there's no getting away from the fact the analog nub is very, very close to the face buttons. When the screen is slid up to reveal the controls, it also rests directly in front of the shoulder buttons, which means you can't really rest your fingers there. It's like fighting over the armrest on a plane.
The PSP 3000 allows you to hold the device securely by the sides, but while the PSP Go may look good, the longer you play the more you realize that it's perched somewhat precariously in your hand. I'm not a big guy, but I found the controls less comfortable than the normal PSP setup. If you're a big guy with big hands, I strongly suggest you hold one for a gaming session or two before you buy. The analog nub itself is frightfully small; I felt like my thumb was continually going to slide right off.
Here's a challenge: find a promo shot that shows someone actually playing a game with the analog nub. There's a reason the images all look like the one I included here; things are way too cramped on the system's face.
A cumbersome process
For a product that is tethered to digital downloads, the process of getting to the content is oddly annoying. There is still no background downloading, which means that once you begin to download a game, you can't do anything else until it is finished. While your mileage may vary, I've often found that downloading files from Sony on both the PSP and PS3 can be a slow affair; a 1GB file can sometimes take an hour or more to pull down. For instant gratification junkies, that's no fun... especially when you can't play another game to pass the time.
Even worse, if you lose your signal or get disconnected, your progress is not saved. It took me a few tries to download the entirety of Gran Turismo on the PSP— for some reason, the hardware lost the connection to my wireless router, and each time I had to begin from scratch. That's incredibly annoying, especially when the wireless technology inside the system is somewhat stale.
For some reason, Sony went with the positively ancient 802.11b, which is the same as previous models. For $250, that couldn't have been bumped up to 802.11g? Or even -n? The entire point of the PSP Go hinges on the wireless, digital aspect of the hardware, so why is that hardware so outdated? Why is downloading a game made to be as annoying as possible?
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