Sony Worldwide Studios boss Shuhei Yoshida has been speaking to GamesIndustry.biz. Amongst other things, as relayed by Edge, he said that the PSP is “getting a bit old”.
Funnily enough, I unearthed my PSP only last week. It’s the original, chunkiest model. A Japanese version, if you really must know. But I still thought: you know, this is a really nice object. And it is: it’s sleek, the screen is sharp; there’s really not much to dislike.
So I don’t think the PSP is getting old at all. Okay, the loading times are a bit of a problem, but it seems pretty current to my eyes. It’s more that the games are getting a bit old. That’s what’s stopping it from being an exciting platform.
Incidentally, it’s LittleBigPlanet I’ve been playing again, and I’m still struggling to be enthusiastic about it. The story levels strike me as superficially imaginative, but ultimately quite predictable platform fare. I know I should get into the user-generated content side of it, but as previously discussed, that scares the living daylights out of me. So I’ll probably just carry on getting moderate enjoyment out of what comes on the UMD for now. Ho hum.
You’re forgetting the PSP 3000, Jake – even sleeker than the original, and quicker loading times. This is the version that Sony should be flaunting.
The PSP Go feels cheap and nasty in comparison, like some dodgy bootleg.
Also – Split/Second is out on PSP soon. That should be a good one.
I realise that the PSP got better with later models; but even my oldest of the old PSP seems pretty nice and modern to me.
I have the same one as you Jake, an original Japanese model (out before the PSP was even launched officially, stolen from a Japanese journalist). It’s still quite nice today… I don’t play it much, possibly rediscovering it once a year, but replaying Final Fantasy Tactics recently I realised that it’s still quite nice. The only thing that shows its age is the frankly quite low resolution screen (my phone has 4 times the pixels and looks a lot more vibrant).
Had a play with the PSP Go recently though, and I was shocked at how cheap and plastic it feels. Surely, it being the newer premium model, it should have a better build quality? But no, the PSP Go felt like crap and my old 2004 PSP feels very solid.