VIDEO GAMER X GETS PLAYSTATION PORTABLE

I just so happened to be up early on Thursday morning, the day of release of the Playstation Portable, and was surfing a site talking about the fact that it hit stores on that day. So I figured I would check it out and see if I could get one, already assuming that I would probably not find any in stock. At least it would give me a reason to get out of the house and go do something. However I was pleasantly surprised when I went to Best Buy and the greeter guy at the front door immediately asked me if I was coming for a PSP, and I replied that yes I was coming for that, and he gave me a ticket with a number on it and said I had to go to customer service to buy it.

I walked up to the customer service counter with no one waiting and asked for a PSP, and was then asked if I wanted to get a game, out of the list I initially looked over, it seemed that Metal Gear Ac!d was the best prospect at that time. As well I got a SanDisk 512 MB Memory Stick Duo card, and a Pelican Accessory kit that included a recharging brick, a good case, screen wipe, extra headphones, gameholders, a disc washer, screen protector, etc. It was about 400 dollars for all this, so I utilized Best Buy's no interest for 6 months deal. I figured I might as well use their money rather than mine. They also gave me a coupon for 5 dollars off the game I bought and I used my Reward Zone card so that I could get points toward more certificates.

Obtaining the PSP was an effortless process that did not involve preorders, long waits, overnight camping, or cement sleeping. Based upon some stories I've read, my experience was not the same everywhere.

The unit itself comes with a rechargeable battery, the battery charger, a 32 MB Memory Stick Duo stick, headphones, a cleaning cloth, a demo disk, Spiderman II the movie, a case, and a hand carry strap. This is all included for the 249.99 retail price. This is high for a handheld, but the quality of the PSP is probably worth it, and here's why. If I remember correctly the SEGA Game Gear was 199.99 when it came out in 1990. Comparing with inflation the two account for about the same price.

The PSP basically has a similar size to the original GameBoy Advance, however is thinner in form factor and much more attractive as a piece of electronics rather than the look of a toy. The PSP has the standard 4 Sony Playstation buttons, Circle, Triangle, Square, and X. There are two shoulder buttons, start and select, L and R, as well as the D-Pad, what intrigued me was the fact that the handheld was the first to include an analog stick. There are other buttons on the unit for screen brightness control, volume control, and music ambiance change. There is a slot for memory sticks, and a switch for turning on the WiFi capability.

The first thing I did was plug it in and boot it up and put in a disc. The unit uses UMD disks, they are basically smaller than a mini-disc and housed in a plastic case. Initially I thought that the disks were housed in the plastic as a case or holder, and I made an attempt at separating the plastic from the disk and found that unsuccessful, then realized I was "noobed" and the disk is supposed to be like that. The first disc I inserted into the PSP was Spiderman II, and the video quality on the widescreen display was immaculate and very clear, rivaling the detail of my TFT LCD for my computer and the screen on the Sony Vaio Laptop. Upon using the supplied Sony earbuds the sound really stood out. I couldn't believe the depth of the sound coming from the earbuds, it lacked deep vibrating bass of course, but the sound was very clear, sharp, and distinct comparable to sitting in a room with surround sound. Spiderman II didn't skip and there was no pixelization or derresolution. Menu controls were exactly like playing a DVD.

I then placed the Demo disk in. The Demo disk included with the PSP has some Music Videos, Movie Previews, and videos of games. The downside was there were no playable demos, just video footage of gameplay for some various games. The music quality on the Music videos was impressive with the headphones off.

I put Metal Gear Ac!d in and the graphics were impressive for a handheld, looked almost as good as the Playstation 2. That was amazing. The game itself though was completely not what I expected. I've played many of the previous Metal Gear games, and it was not like this. Essentially Metal Gear Ac!d is a card and turn based RPG! I was thinking WTF? Aren't Metal Gear games supposed to be "Tactical Espionage Action?" and this was more akin to a boring RPG. I dunno, maybe this game will get better as you play it, but the first hour I spent on it, involved pressing X to scroll through dialogue, and then selecting cards to simply MOVE from one spot to another. Rather than use the analog stick of the PSP to control Snake you simply select the word "MOVE" from one of the cards that look like they were from a Collectable Card Game. To use a weapon you have to select the weapon's card and select "USE." Dumb. If I wanted to play a text based RPG, I would boot up my Commodore 64. Graphics and sound were decent on this game, but the Gameplay for this type of game was through the floor, what's the point. I think the game designers were on "ac!d" when they made this game. It is not fun to play.

One of the best joys I did experience was installing things onto the 512 MB memory card. I put several dozen MP3's onto the memory card, a pile of digital photos, and used a program to convert some existing video files to MP4 and put them onto the memory card. The MP3's sounded great. This definitely supplants the iPod as a killer piece of portable electronics. The only advantage the iPod has over this is the hard drive and the sheer capacity of storage, but it's not a big deal to delete songs you're bored of and insert new ones, and 4 hours of continuous music is just fine with me. As well, an Apple iPod doesn't play video, video games, or display digital photos. For the money the PSP is a WAY BETTER value than an iPod. There are already 2 GB Memory Stick Duos in the pipeline, although their price is currently very high, that will probably be at a reasonable level soon, so with that kind of storage there will be plenty of space for MP3's and other digital media.

There are some features that this could have to make the unit absolutely godly. Something that could display text would be most impressive, as well as a web browser that could access the internet from a WiFi hotspot. It would be nice if you could burn things to UMD sized discs and play them in the PSP. Don't expect that to happen considering Sony touts PSP's copy protection (that will probably be cracked anyway) as an industry advantage to potential developers and entertainment companies. Although the PSP is young, they need to have a PSP Player to link to the PS2, like the GameBoy Advance has for the GameCube, so that you can play the PSP games on your TV. If not that, at least an A/V cable to connect to a TV. I did not see an A/V jack like on Sony's digital cameras. Following this line of thinking it would be useful to be able to use such a player to play the UMD movies rather than have to buy them twice. If Sony plans to make you pay 20.00 for each movie, that's ridiculous considering many people may already have the movies on DVD. I think they could easily sell UMD movies at the 5.00 pricepoint, but their shortsightedness and corporate greed will likely overrule such a notion, and UMD movies will rot on store shelves until they figure it out. Sony Clie PDA functions would be an impressive feature including an onscreen keyboard to keep a personal address list. Integrating a digital camera into it you would think would be a cinch for Sony to accomplish, as well a personal voice recorder feature would be nice. Of course these things would raise the price, but it would put the PSP firmly within the midst of popular PDA brands, and revive Sony's rather defeated Clie line of PDA's.

The Playstation Portable is a formidable piece of electronics, and definitely the GameBoy for older players. Is it a threat to Nintendo and their stranglehold on portable video games? Possibly, however Nintendo has already a well established base in the handheld market, and the GameBoy caters to many children and young teenagers who play those kind of games. PSP's pricepoint and the cost of the games also excludes it from many parent's budgets, so for now I can't imagine Nintendo will lose a substantial percentage of their loyal users. The big question mark on the horizon is if Microsoft will do something like this, create a PDA system like the one I described above, and sell the thing at $129.99. If they were to accomplish this chances are they could make things difficult for Sony and annoying for Nintendo.

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