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R.I.P. PSP

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There comes a time in every system's life when you know there really isn’t any hope left. We take a detailed look at why it’s time to lay the PSP to rest.

The PSP was doomed to fail from the very beginning. With high development costs, a lack of hit games, the UMD movie format, its poor E3 performances, and the competition it faces from the formidable DS Lite, the PSP is now on its last leg. As the following paragraphs reveal in detail, the PSP has started down the road of no return and with each passing moment digs itself farther and farther into its grave.

It all started on March 24, 2005. The PSP was to end Nintendo’s dominating presence in the handheld market just as the Playstation and Playstation 2 took the home console market. The PSP has far superior graphics, a bigger screen, and multimedia functionality. All this extra power did come at a price. The PSP was $100 dollars more than the DS and $170 dollars more than a GBA.

The PSP’s power also had a price for developers who would now have to spend upwards of ten times the amount of money to develop a PSP game as opposed to a GBA game. In 2005 a survey by The Japanese Computer Entertainment Suppliers Association reported that the average development costs for a PSP game was the same as a GCN game and just short of a PS2 game.

From a developer’s point of view committing the same or more resources to a PSP game which has a considerably smaller install base than a PS2, GCN, or GBA system means a smaller return on their investment. In the game industry taking a risk like this is not what most companies want to do. The results of which are a lot of PS2 games watered down to be ported to the PSP, often resulting in mediocre experiences and thus poor sales.

The UMD can hold a lot more information than any GBA cart ever could and was also a way to have the PSP play movies. A great idea for an all-in-one entertainment device, but for gaming on the go dealing with load times is a real pain. Handheld gaming is all about taking out the system on your way to school, work, or while waiting on your wife to try on 20 pairs of shoes. Every second that you have to wait for a level to load is game time lost. With the PSP load times are necessary and the more the UMD spins the more battery power is used up, again resulting in lost game time.

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