Why the Sony PSP Had To "Go"

We recently discussed the release of the PSP Go, which drew criticism for many design choices that were of dubious value to consumers. Now, Phaethon360 sends in a story about why Sony felt the need to improve upon the old PSP. "As a format, the UMD was holding the entire platform back. Few people (if anyone) bought into the UMD movie hype Sony attempted to thrust back in 2005. Very soon after that, people realized they could rip their DVDs to a memory stick with the same quality. It's ironic how, as the price of Sony Memory Stick Pro Duo dropped and size increased, PSP UMD sales decreased along with it. It doesn't take too many Howard Stringers to figure out what the problem was." Indeed, Sony was complaining of rampant PSP piracy for quite some time. They cited "legal and technical issues" for not supporting the transfer of UMD games onto the PSP Go; undoubtedly they couldn't find a way to keep pirated games from being copied.

Comments

UMD transfer the what what?

[Sockatume]

They cited "legal and technical issues" for not supporting the transfer of UMD games onto the PSP Go; undoubtedly they couldn't find a way to keep pirated games from being copied.

I'm not sure how UMD-to-flash transfer helps people copy pirated games. I mean, the pirated games are disk images on flash memory. An actual physical UMD isn't involved.

Re:Is piracy the only option?

[Jaysyn]

I think you may be confusing the media for the PSP.

UMD = Little bitty optical disc in a protective case. Not writable. I think they can hold 1.4GiB of data.

Memory Stick = Sony's proprietary Flash-type media. I think these go up to 16GiB now.

Re:Piracy didn't harm nintendo

[KDR_11k]

I can't think why both of these are the #1 sellers by large margins in consoles and portables... It's certainly not the quality of titles.

Lolwut? The Wii sold almost entirely on stuff like Wii Sports and Wii Fit, neither of which is vulnerable to piracy and both reach out to many people who were not interested in gaming before. IF you're seriously going to argue that the DS has no good games I can only stare in disbelief.

Re:Someone call Natalie

[Corporate Troll]

Because compact flash is essentially the IDE interface... That's why it is preferable over pretty much anything. Alas, as you say: it lost, mainly due because of pyhsical size. In the beginning the price difference between SD and CF wasn't all that apparent.

Re:Not much chance of re-selling with a download

[don_carnage]

I think you really hit the nail on the head here. There is a pretty big market for reselling used games. With the PSP Go, not only are you restricted from reselling your used games but you are also locked into purchasing them from Sony's download service.

Ars Technica published an excellent review on the PSP Go and why you should just stick with the standard PSP 3000.

Re:Optical drive didn't make sense

[rarel]

UMDs could easily be scratched because some genius at SONY R&D decided it would be a good idea to remove the protective sliding cover for whatever reason. Minidiscs have the same form-factor (with slightly cosmetic differences) and a protection over the opening for when the disc is not in use. Just like floppies. They are extremely robust and can last for years without any issue. My first MDs from 12 years ago still work like new.

Now loading time and battery issues, that's another story. :)

Re:And because of piracy...

[SwordsmanLuke]

... No, they removed the ability to install another OS with the latest hardware release. My old 60GB launch PS3 still allows me to install Linux if I so choose. With the PS3 slim, they didn't want to provide linux drivers for the new hardware (which would have added time and testing - and therefore a higher pricetag).