With Hindsight 1.1: PSP

Welcome to the very first ‘With Hindsight’ article. This will be a regular series where we look back at gaming releases from this quickly fading generation and seeing how they hold up with the benefit of hindsight.

Over a series of articles I will be taking a look at the Playstation Portable. Playing the games and using the system. Along with this I will be taking a look at its time on the market, seeing how it faired and what position it is in now. For this first article, we will take a trip back in history…

PSP Part 1: History

The PSP wasn’t Sony’s first attempt at portable gaming. The original Playstation was redesigned to the ‘PSone’ in 2000. Not only was this a much smaller unit than the older models, but it supported the optional add on of a 5 inch LCD screen. While the unit did not operate on batteries, it was viable for personal gaming on the go with the included car power adapter. A year earlier Sony also released the Pocketstation. Rather than being a fully fledged gamin system, this was a small companion for the Playstation that was designed to connect to a memory card port and have mini games relating to Playstation games loaded onto it. It was extremely similar to the Visual Memory Unit, a device Sega launched along with its Dreamcast console at around the same time.

Following these minor entries into the portable space rumours circulated that Sony would be releasing a full handheld system to complete with the long popular Nintendo Gameboy.

The first public announcement of Sony’s portable Playstation was at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in 2003 where early technical specifications were revealed, and the next year the system got a full unveiling of the hardware and a selection of accompanying games.

The PSP was technically impressive, offering power unmatched by Nintendo’s recently announced DS system. Sony endeavoured to compare the system to its extremely successful home console, the Playstation 2. The graphics and games were on par, and all hopes were that the system would reach the same level of success. Interestingly, following the systems official announcement many developers were concerned that it only had a relatively small 8 Megabytes of memory. Because of this Sony quadrupled this to the 32 Megabytes that the system ended up shipping with.

The Playstation Portable was released on the United States on March 24, 2005. The system was available in various bundles that included carry cases, memory cards and headphones. The system launched with over a dozen titles available, both from Sony itself and various high profile publishers. Demand in the US was claimed to be so great that the system had to be delayed in European territories to prevent widespread shortages.

The system looked to be a huge success. After a year on the market 10 million units had been shipped. Sony was on track to have the PSP be to portable gaming what the Playstation 2 was to home consoles.

A great accomplishment to be sure. But could it last?