PSP Go! has left the building…

I’ve always enjoyed my Playstations, all three of them.  I enjoyed my PS One, but rediscovered a joy of gaming with my Playstation 2 that I had missed since the days of my SNES.  I loved the experiences I found in it, from storytelling to simply playing.  Whether I was digging through the intrigue in MGS 2 (which I really enjoyed) or simply blowing shit up in the Ratchet & Clank games, in my PS2 I realized the real power of games, and finally came around to the joy of First Person Shooters.

But, despite my nostalgia, I’m not a Playstation fanboy.  In fact, the “console war” has always struck me as an artificial load of crap designed to pit gamers against a specific console rather than foster a love of gaming in general.  When the “next generation” hit the market a few years ago, I based my choice of console on finances and the fact that the Playstation 3 had exclusive titles that I really loved, while most everything else was multiplatform.  Make no mistake, if I had the money, I would own all the gaming systems I could find.

When the PSP first came out, I was intrigued, but I wasn’t blown away by the thing.  As the gaming library for it expanded and Sony started adding a few other capabilities (like Skype), I’ve found myself pining for one more and more.  Features like an AV out and Remote Play have really made the PSP worthwhile for me.  I just haven’t been able to spare the money for one.  Over Valentine’s Day, my wife gave me a choice: a PSP or a new laptop PC.  I went with the PC because I needed a more portable notebook to really carry out my school-related work and ODU homework.

So, I found myself asking a new question this week when word leaked out of this thing:

If you don’t know, this thing is the PSP Go!  It has Bluetooth functionality, a 16gb flash drive, a Memory-stick micro slot, and is a bit more compact that the PSP available now.  My biggest surprise during Sony’s E3 press conference today was how little Sony stated concerning the thing’s functionality.  The conference made repeated references to cross-platform synchronization between the PSP hardware and the PS3, but it was almost always in reference to the fact that playing the PSP version of Assassin’s Creed will unlock a handful of weapons in the console-based Assassin’s Creed 2.  So, despite a “new” PSP system and Remote Play in the PS3, Sony said virtually nothing about how the Go! could be better integrated into a Remote Play service, or if the thing could stream content off the PS3 hard drive.

And now, two big questions are dominating the thing though, after Sony unveiled it at their presser:

1. It contains no optical drive.  As of now, Sony’s only real hint at how to purchase content points to online services in the Playstation Store.  Thus, the UMD format that Sony has been trying to desparately prop up for three or four years suddenly finds itself competing against…its own creator?!  Sony’s plan is to support this thing and the current PSP 3000 simultaneously, while the catalogue will have a lot overlap at first, and then diversify significantly over time.  Yeah…that makes a lot of sense.
2. The thing comes to the gaming market this Fall for $249, the PSP’s original price point.  Visiting a few message boards showed this has gamers hopping mad, especially with both Nintendo’s DS units priced well under $200 and the PSP 3000 in a barebones package available for $170.  In other words, some are looking at this thing as a only a redesigned PSP in which the optical drive has been removed (raising questions about its compatibility with the existing PSP catalogue) and the controller configuration simply turned into a slider-style layout (and still without a second analog nub).  The thought is that Sony’s trying to milk a flawed design by masking the flaws in a pretty package and then asking for more money for the makeover.

The price point issue is huge, especially since everyone has been waiting for an PS3 price drop that didn’t materialize today.  Instead, Sony drops a quasi-PSP with no vast hardware improvement that’s more expensive than the system currently on the market.  Even given the fact that PSP Go!’s hardware is in a slider configuration, people wondered whether or not it had touchscreen capability.  If it does, Sony said absolutely nothing of it.  Which, in my opinion, means it does not have such functionality, and that is fundamentally stupid considering virtually every other portable device on the planet is now driving in that direction.  The iPod, iPhone, DS, and most cell phones all have it, and one of the largest electronics manufacturers in the world can’t put it on their marquee gaming hardware announcement for 2009.

Sony just can’t seem to find a marketing, service, and design strategy that makes much sense.  If you really want to redesign the hardware this much, why not simply push a bit further, create the PSP 2, and let’s all move on?  Sony often seems, at key points, to proceed in half-steps…in the dark.  Let me say this and be clear:  I don’t see any grand flaw in the hardware’s design as an electronic device, aside from the apparent lack of touchscreen capability.  But, from an experience and service design standpoint, why would any reasonable person buy this thing for $250, especially if its initial catalogue is no different from the PSP 3000 already in many gamers’ hands?

Sony has a bad habit, proven over the last three systems, of designing hardware for which they can’t create a coherent identity within the consumer market.  The original PSP was intriguing, but was initially marketed as a multimedia device that also played games.  But the gaming functionality meant that many of its multimedia features were stripped down in comparison to something like an iPod Video.  And it really took a year and a half for good games to start etching the PSP’s gaming identity, which put it so far behind the DS that the PSP isn’t even a legitimate contender against Nintendo’s market dominance.  The PS3 rolled out a full year after its competitors.  And despite superior hardware, and the fact that Blu Ray won out over HD DVD, the PS3 has only recently started to scratch out a coherent picture of its identity.  Last year saw its first potential killer apps with MGS 4 and Little Big Planet.  Yet, the big title touted at the PS3’s unveiling so many years ago was Killzone 2…which came out this year.

The games situation has started to iron itself out, but only after Sony, again, seemed to needlessly handicap itself.  Sony’s online services have improved, but not enough to really catch up with Microsoft.  Sony goes to great length and expence to create a Second Life clone with Home that doesn’t seem to do anything all that necessary.  Meanwhile, Microsoft simply goes to Facebook and creates a convergence experience relying on technologies and experiences already in place.  I have no idea why Sony can’t figure this sort of thing out, but they haven’t yet.

Participation and the power of social networking is something that Sony just hasn’t really grasped, and they don’t really show too many signs of doing so.