What if? The five features we demand from a PSP re-design
In our previous “what if” columns, we have explored some possible directions that the future of handheld gaming could take, from the highly possible to the downright fantastical. Today, we address an evolution in the product offering of one company that has become not so much a question of “if” as a question of “when?”. The PSP redesign rumor has been floating around the net for a good while, and has been given more heft by the recent comments by Sony executive Ray Maguire that essentially confirmed that the company is working on a smaller, lighter build for the device that we already know and love. Outside of these cryptic comments to the press, we actually know very little about the form that a re-designed PSP might take (and we suspect that this debate also occupies a lot of time around the Sony boardroom these days). As prognosticacors on all things possible, we take this opportunity to lay out what we think are the essential ingredients needed to ensure a successful PSP re-launch.
1. I bite my thumb at thee, Sony. I have no idea why contemporaries of Shakespeare thought that this was such an egregious insult. Maybe they had to endure the equivalent of a medieval gaming device that lacked an additional analogue stick, and with nothing better to do with their thumbs, decided to use them to insult each other. The fact is that the PSP has been seriously hindered by the lack of a second analogue nub. For a device which - love it or hate it - excells at ports of popular Ps2 franchises, it is almost inexcusable that these games have to be shoehorned into such a limiting control scheme. While you’re at it Sony, why not fix the niggling problems with the face buttons and D-pad as well. These changes open up the possibilities for two important genres (fighting games and first-person shooters) that form the staple of many console gamers’ diet. Contrary to the moaning of nay-sayers who cite backwards compatibility issues, the introduction of a second analogue nub would have absolutely no adverse effect on the existing game library. It would simply enable future games to have more control options.
2. Power to the people! Using the latest Sony first-party battery (2200mAh) we get about 3.5 hours of play time out of our PSP when playing typical graphics-intensive games, and 4-5 hours when using it to watch movies or run less intensive homebrew applications from memory stick. While these numbers begin to enter the realm of acceptability for a portable device, the fact that we also get 5+ hours of play time out of our Nintendo DS means that this is an area where Sony can continue to make improvements. It would be great to see a slightly larger capacity battery capable of boosting the autonomy of the PSP to six hours and beyond.
3. Unchain my heart… Due to circumstances beyond my control, I am forced to spend a lot of time outdoors. Normally, this wouldn’t be a problem since handheld games are inherently designed to be played on the go, in just about any environment imaginable. One factor Sony engineers didn’t seem to consider when they designed the first generation PSP was the effect of sunlight on their gorgeous TFT display. Anyone who has attempted to play their PSP in anything even approaching direct sunlight knows that the beautiful 4.3 inch PSP screen quickly becomes something more akin to a black hole from which no gaming goodness can escape. I realize that this limitation affects all TFT displays, but that doesn’t stop me from secretly harboring jealous thoughts every time I see a kid happily playing away on a Gameboy advance on the sunny side of the bus. If Panasonic can make a laptop with a transflective screen capable of better viewing outdoors, why can’t the engineers at Sony come up with a solution to this ongoing problem?
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery
4. Sharing is caring. With all of its vaunted connectivity features, the PSP has failed to make good on its promises to foster community interaction. Very few games make use of the “game sharing” feature, something that has irked more than one game reviewer over the past few years. While popular ads often show friends gathered around a PSP or engaging in some kind of city-wide Easter-egg hunt, from our own experience out in the wild, it is rare to see a PSP become the focus of so much social attention. Fixing this problem represents more of a need for strategic changes on sony’s part than a hardware issue, although there are a few places where they could modify the device to promote more interaction. We know that Wi-fi is the new hotness, but it also demands a hefty price in terms of battery consumption, a trade-off that the PSP can hardly afford to make. Why not kick it old-school and offer a USB gamelink peripheral? Seriously, Sony, we even give you license to name it the “gamelink cable” if you use our idea. Similarly, there are moments when we wish we could share audio and video with our friends without the disappointing performance of the system’s external speakers. These could definitely be improved in a future revision.
5. Unleash the beast. Arguably one of the (few and far between) marketing successes for Sony was their announcement that the Ps3 would be capable of running Linux and supporting homebrew right out of the box. I have several hacker acquaintances who bought a Ps3 just so that they could install their own operating system on it and experiment with multi-core programming. On the PSP front, homebrewers have surprised us all by being constantly one step ahead of Sony. For example, some enterprising hardware hackers found a way to output a GPS signal to a homebrew mapping application months before Sony released their own GPS module to the public (which is still not available in North America). Similarly, hackers have found ways to use third-party keyboards and other peripherals with their PSPs, through a painful and risky reverse-engineering process. What if Sony embraced this community instead of trying to stamp it out, and opened up the PSP for more independent development? Without so many technical obstacles in their way, homebrewers might be able to come up with some new and compelling uses for the device that would literally help it sell itself. Anything has to be better than those racist dustball adverts, after all.
Perceptive readers will notice that we have made it through all five features without once mentioning the words “UMD”. That is because, unlike the lack of a second analogue stick, the UMD format is something we are stuck with, at least in the near future. We would love to see Sony move over to a flash-based digital distribution model, but that will have to wait for a whole new generation of the PSP console. In the mean time, we hope that Sony is considering implementing at least some of our suggestions, because for all of its quirks, the PSP is arguably one of the best handheld gaming systems ever released; just a few tweaks are needed to help it realize greatness.
Posted in Game Culture, PSP News |
