In this second part of the With Hindsight look at the PSP the systems hardware will be examined
When it comes to constructing hardware there have been many dire failures with handheld gaming systems. Remember Sega's Game Gear and its 30 minute battery life? The Atari Lynx that was the size of an Oxford Dictionary? The Game.com that failed at every imaginable turn? Surely Sony, with its huge success in the home console space, could finally offer a handheld system that wasn't only functionally competent but could compete with Nintendo and the 16 year grip they had on the market
PSP Part 2: Hardware
The standard face buttons are well positioned on the system. The four buttons feature the iconic symbols all Playstation products carry, triangle, square, circle and cross. The directional pad is also in line with its heritage, featuring a design very similar to the original Playstation console. Unlike the Playstation 2, no buttons on the PSP are pressure sensitive. The trigger buttons on the system are well placed but can be unresponsive in use. They lack a pivot point and must be pressed very close to the corner in order to register.
By far the biggest controversy the PSP had in regards to control input is the analog ‘nub'. Rather than implementing a full analog stick like those featured on home consoles, the PSP uses a circular flat disc slider. This concession was most likely made to benefit the portability of the system and to remove additional bulk. The nub is responsive and does allow for full 360 degree analog movement. The biggest issue with it is the placement it has on the system. Placed below the directional pad, the nub comes across like an afterthought. It is by far smaller than the D-pad, even if you take into account the travel space for its movement. Its positioning makes it difficult to grip the system while using it for extended periods. The majority of games used this nub as a primary input method, further reinforcing its weaknesses. Also unlike its console counterparts, the PSP has only one analog input compared to the twin sticks on the Dual Analog controller Sony first established for its home consoles many years earlier in 1997.
PSP's analog 'nub'
The start, select, volume and home buttons are located on a flat bezel directly below the screen. They deceptively appear to be touch sensitive but are merely flat, flush buttons, similar to those found on cheap credit card sized remote controls. Because of this they are very difficult to locate in low light environments. It is impossible to feel where they are located requiring focus to be taken away from playing a game in order to visually locate them.
Powering the system on and off is done using a slider located on the bottom of a unit. This slider also provides two additional features: by sliding it to the left the PSP enters Hold, locking all the buttons to prevent accidental use when listening to music or watching videos. By tapping it briefly to the right the system enters Sleep mode, suspending game play and powering down the screen and disc drive. The latter is particularly useful for the often intermittent nature of portable gaming.
Before the release of the PSP, every handheld gaming system used read-only memory cartridges for storing the data of a game. The PSP was the first, and currently only, handheld system to implement an optical disc system for data storage. The Universal Media Disc, or UMD, is a small, 60 millimeter optical disc contained within a protective shell. The biggest advantage the UMD had over cartridge based media is the shear amount of data storage they provide at a relatively low production cost. A standard UMD holds 1.8 gigabytes of information. This is an enormous size, offering over one hundred times the data storage capability of a basic game cartridge used by the PSPs competitors. The decision to use optical media was one of the biggest criticisms PSP faced. The UMD drive added significant bulk to the system, requiring multiple mechanical parts to both rotate the disc and the drives laser assembly. These moving parts also drastically impacted on the battery life of the system and access times were not as fast as common cartridge media, resulting in significant loading times in some game titles. For the fidelity of games that the PSP carried, optical media was the only viable solution at the time. When the system launched in 2005 a comparable sized read-only memory chip would have cost several hundred dollars while a UMD could be manufactured cheaply using standard disc printing facilities with minimal modification.
A 1.8GB Universal Media Disc
Because the system used optical media a separate flash memory unit was needed to provide functionality for saving game progress and storing digitally distributed content. Sony chose to use its proprietary Memory Stick range of products with the PSP and launched the system along side the latest iteration, the Memory Stick Pro Duo. Initially these cards were only available in three sizes of 256, 512 and 1024 megabytes, but have since expanded to include sizes up to 32 Gigabytes. At the launch of PSP Memory Stick Pro Duo cards were notoriously expensive compared to other, more widely used memory cards of similar specification. Following this it was not long before third party manufactures started producing compatible memory sticks for a significantly cheaper retail price. Today the most cost effective solution is to use a specialised adapter card that allows the PSP to use much cheaper SD and microSD memory cards. These adapters are notoriously cheap, often selling for less than $5, and allow a PSP to have the maximum 32 gigabytes of storage for less than $20.
Don't comply with proprietary formats; Adapt
For basic connectivity the PSP featured a standard mini USB jack for connection to a home computer or Playstation 3 console. A surprising feature at the launch of the system was the ability for the PSP to interface with Microsoft's Xbox 360 console, allowing music and photos to be viewed. In modern times the USB mass-storage device class standard has made this type of interactivity common place, but in 2005 this was a surprising feature.
Very unlikely bedfellows
This screen was by far one of the largest and highest resolution of nearly any portable device available at the time. For comparison, the PSP's screen had over two and a half times the pixel count of the Nintendo DS' displays and the Apple iPhone that launched over two years later only had 320 lines of resolution compared to the 272 on the PSP. Modern displays on portable devices far exceed these parameters. Grid lines between pixels are definitely noticeable and colour fidelity is slightly lacking when compared to the ultra high resolution screens offered in new release smart phones. Both the limitations of screen technologies in 2005 and the need to have graphical processing hardware capable of supporting the displays resolution resulted in the now comparatively low specification screen.
The PSP has received multiple hardware iterations over its 8 years on the market. The unit available at launch, the PSP-1000, came with a range of features that for the most part remained intact in future generations. Interestingly, this model had in Infrared port similar to those used in remote controls. This feature was never used during the life of the PSP and was subsequently dropped from every future release. The first hardware iteration was released 30 months after the PSP-1000. Creatively named the PSP-2000, this model attempted to remedy some of the issues consumers had with the initial release. It was marketed as being 33% lighter, 19% slimmer and more efficient with battery life. The system had an extra 32 megabytes of system memory implemented to allow quick caching of data from the UMD drive, benefiting both loading times and battery life. The ability to connect a PSP to a HDTV was added in this iteration. Due to PSP games being rendered at a lower resolution than a standard video signal, significant black borders were placed around the image. Games were also generally not visually impressive, a result of titles being heavily optimised for a small fix resolution display. Just over a year later the PSP-3000 was released, offering a very minor redesign, retaining all the features of the PSP-2000 while implementing a built in microphone.
Thick window boxing limited TV out functionality.
The most drastic departure from the base model was the PSP Go. Released late in 2009, this unit tried to capitalise on the popularity of Apple's iTunes store by removing the UMD drive completely and offering content exclusively over digital distribution. Unlike other models, the PSP Go used a slide out design rather than a horizontal layout. To compensate for the lack of a UMD drive the system was pre installed with 16 gigabytes of flash memory to store game data. It was significantly less bulky, featuring a screen reduced from the standard 4.3” size to 3.8”. It was seen as an attempt by Sony to eliminate the need for retail outlets to stock games, pushing for higher profit margins and eliminating the ability for games to be sold used. By far the biggest downfall of the PSP Go was key PSP titles being unavailable digitally. At launch only around half of all PSP games were available digitally. Big third party publishers, including Square-Enix, did not initially offer new releases digitally at all, with the big budget title Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep foregoing a digital release entirely. Pricing was also heavily criticised, with most games being available far cheaper at retail stores on UMD format. As a result of this the PSP Go was widely viewed as a failure. Sales were extremely low, especially in Japan where the standard PSP console was very successful. The PSP Go was discontinued by Sony two years after its release.
The PSP Go lacked more than it gained
The most recent PSP is the E1000 ‘Street', the unit primarily used for consideration in this article. This Street model is marketed as a budget, cut down version of the PSP. It is sold exclusively in European and Australasian regions where all other PSP models have been discontinued. The TV output, microphone and, most surprisingly, wireless networking features have been removed. No multiplayer games can be played, and all digitally distributed content must be obtained by connecting the system to a PC and using Sony's Media Go software suite.
The PSP E1000
The hardware in the PSP succeeds, but does feel like a product of its time. Sony endeavoured to recreate the experience its hugely successful Playstation 2 system offered in a portable format. Through each iteration the design and functionality were improved but it was always bound by choices made in a 2005 mindset. Sony did experiment with efforts to improve the user's experience, but so many of these decisions did not pay off.
Even with the best hardware, it is the games that cause a gaming system to succeed. In the next entry in this series of articles we will take a look at the software available for the PSP.