The Second P Stands For Portable

You can call me a lot of things. Some say I’m bias against Sony, but it seems every time they try and take one step foreword, they end up taking three or four backwards instead.

This time I’m talking about the new PSP; PSP Slim, or PSP2000 depending on who’s talking about it. Personally, after the year 1999 I don’t think anyone should put the 2000 moniker on anything. It was cool in the 70’s and 80’s, but not so much today.

The biggest problem I have with the new PSP is the video out feature. Video out? On a handheld?

Now, I can almost understand the GBA attachment to the GameCube. If you didn’t have a GBA but still wanted to play Minish Cap or, Super Mario Land I can ALMOST see the point of that. But actually hooking up your portable system to a television? There’s a name for that; and its console.

The PSP was touted as a portable PS2. Even its abbreviation confuses me when I say it sometimes. But once you attach a PSP to a television it no longer becomes a PSP. At that point it’s just a PS. Besides, hooking your PSP, which has a 3.5inch screen up to a 32inch HDTV probably isn’t going to look very good. There’s going to be some major loss of quality there, plus, you’re still using the thing as a controller. The awkwardly flat, single analog sticked PSP is your controller. And let’s be honest, no handheld makes a good controller.

Sony already doesn’t understand how to play with the portable market, including way more things then are necessary into the PSP, when all gamers really want are good games. And not good games that I need to sit and play for hours at a time, like most of their library. Do you think the reason why the new PSP has video out is because people complained about staring at the little screen for so long, so instead of making games that work in short trips (on a bus or subway), it was decided that plugging it into a television was a much better solution.

So I say, why stop at just video out? The PSP has wi-fi. Why not just allow users to connect their PS3 controller to the PSP. That way they can connect their PSP to the television and play games using an actual controller. That’s a genius idea. Wait, what did the second 'p' stand for?