Sony has released their new portable gaming system, the PSP GO. At first glance it looked really cool and sleek. I thought it would be
something that i could carry in my pocket to replay my bulky psp (I
have the original psp). The PSP GO is a great deal smaller and the
screen looks crisper than mine. I generally hold off before buying the
latest and greatest so i can play one of my friends. I was lucky
enough to have a friend that bought one on lunch day and wanted to
come to my house to gloat.

He opens the box and reveals the shiny new PSP GO. I was a little
jealous because I did want one at the time, but the fact that you
could not play your old PSP games on it held me back. He turned on the
system and got the low battery message. No problem, just plug it up,
but their was a problem. The charger is in 3 pieces. When you have to
look at the manual just to find out how to plug up your system,
something is wrong. During this process, I noticed the mini usb plug
has been replaced with a proprietary plug.

He has it charging and wants to play a game so he tried to download
one. He buys the game as we both are trying to look at the screen to
see what it looks like. The download screen appears and it says
estimated time 42 min. WHAT?!?! 42 min before he can play the game? I
have a g network with a very fast cable connection. I can download a
8.3 gig linux ISO in under 42 min. Also, come to find out the game was
the same price as if he bought it at any retail store, so Sony just
made more money off him. They didn’t have to package, ship or pay the
store their cut. They just got all the profits from the game.
As he is downloading the game, we discover another annoyance of the
system. You can’t do anything else while it is downloading the
game. You can’t look at the calendar, play a game, watch a movie, or
listen to music. If you are trying to back out of the menu, it cancels the
download. The download process took about 50 min to complete. I tell my
friend that I could of made it to the store,
bought the game, made it back, and been playing for 30 min while he
waits on it to download.

At this point, he doesn’t feel so smug anymore, he is starting to
realize that he traded in his PSP for another PSP GO that has less
capability. He had one shining hope, he said and I quote “Well at
least I don’t have to leave my house to buy the games.” I told him he
was wrong and I didn’t have to either. He then proceeded to give me
one of his PSP GO game cards, saying if you can play it on your PSP
you can have it. I say thanks, update my firmware, and download the
game. An hour later I have a freshly downloaded God of War game
playing on my PSP. At this point, my friend packs everything up and
takes it back the store saying it will not keep a connection to any
wireless network. Not sure how, but that worked and they took it back.
He now has a PSP 3000 and is enjoying it.

Lastly, a few other things I found out while my friend had his PSP GO
was that no accessory from the PSP will work with the PSP GO. The
battery can not be replaced which is a major annoyance to me. I like
to go a lot of places that I don’t have access to a power outlet, so I
have backup batteries for most of my devices. Also if you are someone
who likes to trade in your games or buy used games then you are out of
luck with the PSP GO. You can only buy things directly from the PSN
and they can’t be traded. Another annoyance is that it says its a 16 gig
system, but when you look at the free space on the system, it only says
14 gigs. The biggest annoyance is that every game that is released for
download is also going to be released on UMD so their is no reason to
buy it off the PSN.

I know the majority of these are petty but there are so many minor
issues with the system, that they add up to a very crappy piece of
hardware. If they had a way to transfer all your PSP UMD games to the
PSP GO, then I could over look all the issues. The fact that I would
still have to keep my origional PSP to play my old games just makes me
think why? Why do I need something that I have to start my game
collection over and not get any increase in graphics or functionality.
If you do not have a PSP and don’t care about after market games, then
it may be a good buy but if you have a PSP, don’t bother.

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