19 Years Later, Sony Still Hasn't Recreated PSP's Greatness

Hanzala from eXputer: "With an impressive screen, beefy hardware, multimedia capabilities, and a banger library, Sony's PSP brightened our lives 19 years ago."

[gold_drake]

i think its abit difficult this time around.

people want better graphics and better framerates and a handheld does have its limitations.

it can be done but yeh.

[purple101]

this thing hurt my large hands after 5 mins,.

in some cases, bigger really is better!

[Aphrodia]

PsP Go was a killer little device. Ahead of it's time. I still bust it out when going on flights ✈️.

[darthv72]

it was the Switch before the Switch. I like to dock mine to a tv and play with a sixaxis controller now and then.

[Knightofelemia]

I still have my Vita and my PSP. Movies on the PSP looked so great at the time.

[Skuletor]

I still remember watching episodes of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Family Guy & The Simpsons on mine. Damn, that was a long time ago.

[BlackCountryBob]

I was at a retro store yesterday and burst out laughing when they were trying to sell the first season of 24 on UMD, that’s commitment to the format to watch 24 episodes of tv on the PSP

[Skuletor]

PSP was great as is but adding custom firmware made it one of the best handhelds I've ever used

[Profchaos]

Still a awesome system for retro games the dpad was better than the vitas

[CrimsonWing69]

Um… wasn’t it kind of a flop?

[Profchaos]

The vita was a flop the PSP though was a huge success.

[InUrFoxHole]

Yeah the vita was a giant flop but I did enjoy uncharted on it.

[Profchaos]

As a owner of the original PSP I was blown away by it back in the day however there was always caveats to its games.

It was rare to get a native PS2 game ported more often there would be bespoke versions of games that were cut down graphically inferior or missing significant amounts of content due to the 1.4 GB of space on the umd vs the 4.7 of the DVD not the mention the dual layer DVDs that gt4 came on.

The bespoke games could be amazing like the GTA stories games unfortunately these appear lost to time with Rockstar seemingly refusing to acknowledge them with a re release but more often than not the games were basically need for speed underground rivals or something equally average.

Have to remember though the PSP was pre smartphone we didn't have any real 3d capable hardware at the time unless you rocked a huge gaming laptop. Most people expected the power of a PS1 in the PSP.

Unfortunately as the years went on as a PSP owner the PS3 came out and development pipelines changed more work was required on PS3 games and less effort went into PSP eventually releases dried up.

If Sony wanted a modern system it couldn't go this route again you couldn't split the development pipelines it would need to run native Ps5 games at lower resolutions or frame rate

[ROCKY28]

PS Vita plays everything all PSP & Vita titles including all retro and classic arcade games on an OLED screen
the best hand held there is today to play all these titles...

[Skuletor]

As someone that owns both a PSP and PS Vita, I think a lot of PSP games look better on the original PSP screen, instead of stretched to the Vita one.

[GhostMirror]

I have the Neon Orange Korean LCD model, but the fact that the Vita launched with an OLED display in 2011/2012 is wild. It was really ahead of its time. They should never have gone with those proprietary memory cards, though.

[RNTody]

Yes the PSP was amazing for its time, one of the coolest handhelds ever, but the nostalgia bait needs to end. The Switch changed the handheld gaming landscape, and proved why the Vita failed. No one wants to play watered down, lite-triple A experiences on handhelds and pay a premium price for them. It isn't worth the development costs to dedicate games to a handheld and split your focus. People want to play the same games on their consoles that they play on the go. This was already proven when the Vita had a surge in popularity thanks to its remote play feature on the PS4 - that's what I used it for the majority of the time and was my gateway to remote play. Certainly better than playing Uncharted or Killzone lite editions on the Vita.

Now with the Switch and Steamdeck entering the markets, we get to play our libraries on the go. Why on earth would you want to go backwards? There's really only two options for Sony. Create a Steamdeck for PS5, at a high cost and with flexibility and compete against all the handheld gaming PCs around, or create the inexpensive Portal accessory which is the route they went.

I love the Portal at the moment.

[vTuro24]

The Vita was awesome tho.

[Blaze929]

It was a moment, a time. The PSP delivered abilities that no other piece of tech deliveed at $249.99.

Today, every smart phone can do what the PSP did and probably better now. There's no need for another one.

[GhostMirror]

Yeah, but, obviously a modern handheld from Sony would be much more powerful than the PSP was, so what are you even talking about? The Switch and the Steam Deck have also spurred on a sort of handheld renaissance. I mean, we multiple have handheld gaming PCs now, and even the PS Portal—which is strictly for remote play—is selling quite well.