Was The PSP Ultimately A Failure?

August 23rd, 2006 Davis Posted in Video Games, TV |

I never bought a PSP, but there have definetely been times where I’ve seen someone on BART watching a movie or playing a game and I’ve secretly wanted to just grab it from them right before the doors to the train close. While I’ve never been desperate enough to try and boost a PSP (or even buy one for that matter) I’ve long admired the sleek design and the functionality of their portable gaming device. The biggest reason why I haven’t bought one is because of the size of the device. While I think that the screen size is just about the minimum ideal viewing screen, the long rectangular form of the device would be difficult to tuck away in my pocket and I worry that I’ll have to carry it around if I ever do want to use it.

Despite my own reluctance to invest in a PSP, I’ve always thought of the device as being very successful, but Live Digitally links to a great article by Matt Whitlock with TechLore, who seems to feel that Sony’s PSP is already outdated and that they made a number of mistakes along the way. One of the mistakes that he cites is Sony’s desire to be all things to all people. In some ways this is consistent with their PS3 strategy where they are forcing consumers to buy a Blu-ray player if they want to own a PS3, yet I still have to disagree with Matt that this contributed to Sony’s “failure” in respects to their PSP. I actually think that part of Sony’s success with the PSP came because people knew that they could go beyond video games on the console and it’s multi-functionality was a good selling point for the device. By enabling the device to play movies and music, Sony created a much more compelling product then limiting the PSP just to the gamer audience.

Where I do agree with Matt’s analysis is that the PSP failed in regards to UMD. When Sony released the PSP, they wanted to make sure that they could exploit consumer’s desire to use the video feature by over charging for UMD movies. In the same way that the video download sites today want to charge $20 for a download that you can buy for $9.99 at Walmart, Sony wanted to reap profits by locking their customers into a proprietary system and then bilking them out of their hard earned cash. When this didn’t fly, they ultimately abandoned the UMD in lieu of memory sticks.

Now I’ll never understand exactly why they abandoned the UMD because I fail to see how it costs them anything to offer the format even if only one customer is willing to pay $19.99 to own a digital copy of a film, but I’m sure that there are deeper issues at stake. In retrospect, I’m not sure that it’s fair to call the PSP a failure, but if it did ‘fail’ I think a big reason why, is that they didn’t provide an easy way for me to transfer TV directly to the device. Having recently dissected the costs of owning cable I can tell you that consumers already pay too much for TV, but when you try to make them pay another $20 for a 2 hour film, it’s ridiculous to expect them to pay it. Had Sony made it more convienent for me to view the television that I’ve already paid for on the go or had they come up with a way for me to stream my content directly from a set top box, I think that the PSP would have been a bigger hit with the less mainstream gamers. While the last portable console that I owned was a Game Boy, I think that had I been able to watch time shifted TV on a PSP that it could have been a crucial factor in getting me to purchase a device. I hate to knock the PSP because it really is a very cool portable device, but at the same time I hope that Sony learns something from this experience and that the next time around we will see a portable device that doesn’t force a consumer to purchase the same content more then once.