Gaming novices may find the PSP's multiple controls a lot to handle. It offers two four-way arrays of buttons to operate with your left and right thumbs, left and right switches to work with your index fingers and an "analog stick" that also falls under your left thumb -- and which can cramp up your hand.
Instead of CDs or DVDs, the PSP uses a new, smaller format that Sony has optimistically christened the Universal Media Disc (UMD). These 2 1/2-inch-wide discs store 1.8 gigabytes of data, far more than the flash-memory cards used in other handhelds. (One unpleasant side effect: lengthy waits for games to load, up to a minute in my tests.)
Rob Pegoraro says the $250 Sony PlayStation Portable is a 'peerless' gaming machine, 'combining sharp graphics, deep game play and easy online connectivity.'
(Julia Ewan - The Washington Post)
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| | | | ___Personal Tech E-letter___ Washington Post personal technology columnist Rob Pegoraro answers reader e-mail and expands on themes he touches on in his weekly newspaper column. The e-mail version of this weekly feature includes links to the latest gadget and software reviews.
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That kind of storage allows PSP titles to offer much of the depth and detail of games made for the PS2, Nintendo's GameCube and Microsoft's Xbox. PSP sports simulations, for instance, let you build teams by drafting and trading players, instead of just playing games with a fixed roster.
Sony says 24 games will be available initially, at $40 or $50 each. (See the related story below for an evaluation of this batch of titles.)
A rechargeable, replaceable battery powers the PSP; it ran for about 4 1/2 hours with WiFi on.
If Sony had quit there, it would have had an unambiguous winner. But it fell flat in trying to turn the PSP into a media machine that plays and displays movies, music and photos.
In this role, the PSP is the prisoner of its own formats. Movies must be bought or rented on UMDs, which can neither be played or viewed on any other devices. Only 22 titles have been announced so far; even discounted off their $20 list prices, these constitute a lousy deal.
Because those same UMDs aren't rewriteable, your own music and photos can be stored only on a Memory Stick Duo card inserted in a slot on the PSP's side. This cut-down version of Sony's proprietary, expensive Memory Stick format can't be used in a regular Memory Stick slot without an adapter, but Sony doesn't include one. Nor does it include the USB cable you'll otherwise need to connect a PSP to a PC. (At least the PSP's standard-size USB jack accepted the cable from my handheld organizer.)
Once you've obtained an adapter or USB cable, copying music and photos requires creating a particular hierarchy of folders on a Memory Stick Duo, without which the PSP can't find your files. If you, unlike most, have downloaded songs from the Sony Connect online store, you'll need to use Sony's SonicStage program to transfer those files.
If you get a PSP, do yourself a favor and stick to the games. If you also want to listen to music and view your pictures, just get an iPod Photo or another music-plus-photos player. What if you don't want to carry around two expensive gadgets all the time? Then you've got a problem -- and so does Sony, until it revisits the PSP's multimedia software.
Living with technology, or trying to? E-mail Rob Pegoraro at rob@twp.com.
