By Jose Antonio Vargas
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 24, 2005; Page C01

Chris Gillis's plan goes something like this: Be up at 7 a.m., throw on jeans and a T-shirt, make the five-minute drive to Target. Then wait in line. Target, at Westfield Shoppingtown in Wheaton, opens at 8.

He must get the PSP. He will get the PSP.

The first million PSPs -- short for PlayStation Portable -- are in stores today. A lot of people went to EB Games or GameStop or FYE, stores that took pre-orders, Gillis figures. Other hard-core gamers wouldn't think of going to Target, which didn't take pre-orders. If Target sells out, his Plan B is Toys R Us or Circuit City. No pre-orders there, either.

When the 21-year-old says "I want the PSP badly," it's hard not to believe him.

Sony's PSP, retailing for $249, is entering the portable gaming territory long dominated by Nintendo's GameBoy. In marketing-speak, Sony describes the PSP as "the first truly integrated portable" system. In consumer-speak, it means you can play video games, watch movies, download MP3 files, store JPEG images -- and, thanks to built-in WiFi wireless networking, face off against someone on the Internet.

In short, the PSP is a multitasker suited to these hyperactive times. We want it all. We want it here. We want it now.

In the world of the now, the PSP is the new thing, the gadget of the moment. In this world your Xbox isn't enough, so you need a PlayStation 2 on top of the GameCube. This is the world where 15-year-old Landon Tate in Peoria, Ill., couldn't hold out until today for the PSP so he spent his Christmas money (all $554 of it) in December to buy one imported from Japan.

"I love it," Tate says via e-mail. "It is what I have always looked for in a handheld."

The mobility factor, in addition to so many capabilities, is what Sony is banking on.

"The mobility and portability aspect of the PSP is really key," says Anita Frazier, a San Diego-based entertainment industry analyst for NPD Group. "As a society as a whole, we don't want to be tied to wires or cables. We want to be able to move around, and have as much freedom with where we go and what we do with our devices."

Sales of portable hardware -- the Nintendo DS, the latest incarnation of its GameBoy, was a big seller last Christmas -- were up 10 percent in 2004 to nearly $830 million nationally. If Sony sells a million PSPs, as expected, that's $249 million out of the gate, Frazier says.

"The acceleration of all this technology in our lives is truly amazing," she continues. "Who knows what it's going to mean down the line?"

Gillis, a junior at the University of Maryland, College Park, sounds a little conflicted about his passion for such a frenetic existence.

"I think we're just afraid of being bored. People my age always complain about being bored. If they're not doing something every second of the day -- talking on their cell phone, typing an IM, listening to their iPod, or playing on their PS2 -- then they're bored."

Then, he adds, "I've outgrown the GameBoy. The only people I see playing GameBoys are my nieces and nephews. The PSP is like the iPod. It's a cool image to be seen with."

For the past two weeks, he's logged on regularly to IGN.com, a popular gaming site with more than 20 million unique visitors a month.

Some of the postings that appeared in recent weeks in anticipation of the PSP:

"Should I sell my iPod? Need your opinion."

"PSP: Soon to be the most stolen product in schools everywhere."

"Don't Miss the New York PlayStation Portable Meetup Group." (Hector Martinez, the 30-year-old corporate trainer who posted this, said in a phone interview that the group has 31 members -- 10 of whom will meet tomorrow at the Manhattan Mall on Sixth Avenue and 33rd Street to play against each other.)

The IGN site is where Nathan Weishaar and Ethan Lowry have ruled, at least until this morning, when the PSP hit store shelves. Both 19, part-time workers at EB Games and roommates at MidAmerica Nazarene University in Kansas, they got their PSPs Feb. 4, for $300 each on eBay. "We heard about it a lot. . . . We couldn't wait," Weishaar says by phone.

Last night he was sitting in front of his laptop, answering instant messages from friends and posting messages on IGN about his PSP.

Lowry was nearby playing Need for Speed Underground Rivals with his PSP. Their room, Weishaar says, has two Xboxes, one PlayStation 2 and one GameCube.

"Every time we pull it out, people just stare," Weishaar says. "We just had a tornado drill like two hours ago, and we took the PSPs with us. We started playing and soon 15 or so dudes were just watching us."

Bart Simon, a professor at Concordia University in Montreal, last year founded GameCODE, a research project focusing on the cultural analysis of video games. Of the PSP, which is also being launched in Canada today, he says: "What portable gaming does is take video games to the public in the same way that the cell phone took communication out of the homes and into the street, and you can bet that with something like PSP, you'll see more and more people -- and not just young people -- playing games out in the open. It's not a good thing. It's not a bad thing. It's a whole new social thing."

Vicky J. Rideout, vice president of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, isn't sure what it all means. The foundation released a survey this month, noting that U.S. children ages 8 to 18 get 8 1/2 hours of media exposure a day.

"It's not just teenagers or twenty-somethings who'll use PSPs, it's 10-year-olds," Rideout says. "I'm not going to tell you that this new piece of technology is necessarily a bad thing, but I do think it's a legitimate question as to whether constant stimulation, especially for young kids, is a good thing. I think we need to pay attention to whether it's stimulating or stifling creativity and their ability to focus."

Gillis isn't worried about that right now. Chances are, depending on the time of the day, he's either standing in line or playing Metal Gear Acid on his new PSP.