Marauder Rants; My thoughts on the PSP

Greetings to all G1's,

Marauder here once more with another entry in my blog. As you all can tell by the title of the entry, this particular writing is aimed at the PlayStation Portable. I would like to address some of the things that have been aimed at the little system and give my opinion. So what do I think of the sleek Game Boy wannabe? Well, read on and you shall find out.

I would like to start by telling a story about what inspired me to write this blog entry in the first place. It was about a week or two ago and I was at a relatives house. I soon found myself bored out of my mind and reached into my travel bag. I had both the Nintendo DS and The PlayStation Portable next to each other in the bag. I reached for the dual screen clam shell, then I paused and instead pulled out the silver PSP. I then rifled through my game selection. Soon I ended my search by selecting the game "Daxter".I started the game and was soon jumping around swatting bugs and dodging green slime.

I was about an hour into it, when a feeling started to creep up my spine. what was this feeling that I was experiencing? I have felt this feeling before but never with this particular video game system. Then it struck me, I knew what this feeling was! I was having fun. I know it sounds hard to believe but I had fun playing a game on the PSP.

This brings me to the first complaint that I hear many people level at the PSP, lack of quality games. I will agree that the little portable is some what lacking in quality titles. However, If one goes digging, they are bound to find some games that they will enjoy. Heck, even the Atari Jaguar had a few decent games on it. So well the PlayStation Portable is certainly better then the Jaguar, the quality games are still somewhat hard to find.

I find it rather perplexing that the PSP has been on the market for as long as it has and is still lacking in quality software. If a gamer was to look at the Nintendo DS, they could easily find more then a hand full of fantastic games. This is not the case for the PSP. So who's fault is it for the lack of hit games? I blame the developers. Sony marketed their portable as a mobile PlayStation 2. So as such many developers simply ported over their games from the console over to the PSP. Many developers really fail to take advantage of the things that the PSP can do. As such many of the titles turn out to be lackluster and not very entertaining. This does not detract from the fact that their are some great PSP titles, I just think by now their should be more of them.

The second thing that people seem to mention about the PlayStation is that it works better as a multimedia device. I would like to find some sort of fault with that point of view. I simply cannot. The PSP has really mastered the portable media side of things. It can play movies and music as well as surf the web, a feature that has helped me out on more then one occasion. It has made long car rides and hospital visits just fly by. Overall the multimedia functions are unrivaled.

The third thing I hear people mention with startling consistency are the UMD movies. This is one part of the multimedia experience that I agree has fallen short. When I first heard of the little optical discs that could hold a full length movie, I was excited. I started to imagine how much fun it would be to watch all my favorite movies in DVD quality on the go. Then when the UMD discs started coming out, they were priced the same, if not more then buying the DVD! That made no sense to me. If Sony really wanted the UMD media to succeed, they should have priced the movies below the cost of the DVD. I own a few movies on the UMD format and I got them all new for five dollars on clearance at Game Stop. That is how much I am willing to pay for them. The UMD movie idea was great, but due to poor marketing and pricing it was doomed to fail. With the ability to encode movies to the memory stick the UMD movies are pretty much useless now anyway.

The last thing that I hate hearing about, is the PSP's battery life. Some people argue that the system drains power like crazy. Well I agree that the battery life is not as long as one would hope, it actually lasts a decent amount of time. I mean does anyone remember the battery life that the Sega Game Gear had, that thing was a power hog. The battery on Sony's portable powerhouse is much better then that of the Game Gear and I for one have had no problems with the battery life of the system. It works well and offers enough play time to keep me on the satisfied side of the fence.

I actually have fun playing games on my PSP. Also, the system is a great multimedia device. I just wish that developers would really spend time on making games for the system. The best games on the PSP are generally retro game compilations and remakes of older classic games like Mega man.

So what would make the PSP a successful gaming machine? I think Sony needs to really shift its focus for the hand held. They should focus on making great games for the system and market the games accordingly. They should also encourage developers to do the same. Then they need to drop the price of UMD movies. Then, maybe just maybe the PSP could stand a real fighting chance against Nintendo's dual screen clam shell.

So in conclusion, I think the PSP is a great hand held. As it stands, the Portable PlayStation is a great multimedia device that also plays games. It should be the other way around, and that's a real same.

Thanks for reading,

-Marauder-

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