Blog: Hands on with the PSPgo

It was one of only around 12 such devices in the world at present, and certainly the only one in Australasia.

Obviously, the main selling point of the PSPgo is its size. At 122mm by 66.5mm with a width of 15.9mm, it’s a slim and compact device that will now fit comfortably into your pocket as opposed to the comparably bulky PSP-3000. In fact, the PSPgo is some 43% smaller than its predecessor. The display is slightly smaller than that of the PSP-3000 at 2.78 inches as opposed to the PSP-3000’s 4.3 inches. But having recently used a PSP-3000, I can report that the difference in screen size is barely noticeable, and the PSPgo’s onscreen resolution is as crisp, viewable and impressive as ever.

The PSPgo’s humble size comes at the expense of the UMD drive that has been the primary media input method on earlier iterations of the PSP. The only drawback of this is that the PSPgo will not support your existing UMD library of games and movies. I queried Sony’s Senior Product Manager Krister Robinson if the company had any plans to ease the pain of loyal PSP users who aren't keen to repurchase games they already own on UMD, and he said that Sony hadn’t announced anything at this stage, but said he’d keep me posted.

Robinson did mention that Sony has no plans to discontinue UMD support for upcoming titles, so owners of older PSPs won’t be limited to purchasing future titles exclusively from the PlayStation Store.

Instead of the UMD disc drive, the PSPgo boasts a reasonably impressive 16GB embedded flash drive, with support for Memory Stick Micro (M2) drives, which currently hold up to 16GB of data with a theoretical maximum of 32GB. Rather than purchasing games and movies on a physical disc format, PSPgo users will download media from the PlayStation Store, either directly to their PSPgo using a wi-fi connection or via their PC or PS3.

The obvious question that arose out of this for me was this: does the PSPgo’s reliance on its flash drive for storage limit the amount of media that the user can download and host on their device? Robinson assured me that this was not the case, and filled me in on Media Go, a PC application that allows you to store and organise your downloaded media in a manner similar to iTunes. And much like iTunes, you can transfer your games, movies and music from your PC to your PSPgo at your leisure.

Robinson told me that full PSP games are roughly around the 1GB mark in size, perhaps slightly more. There were a few PSP demos from E3 loaded onto the PSPgo that I got to try out, namely Gran Turismo, LittleBigPlanet and SOCOM FireTeam Bravo 3; there were others, but I limited my playing time to these titles. I didn’t spend a great deal of time on the actual games themselves either – my aim was to get a general indication of how the device itself plays, and I’ve got to say that the size and weight is a vast improvement over earlier PSPs. It feels intuitive and very right to have the controls situated directly beneath the screen, and the handheld sits comfortably in the hands, which subsequently rest comfortably in your lap.

Gran Turismo






















LittleBigPlanet

SOCOM: FireTeam Bravo 3

In a nutshell, the PSPgo contains everything that gamers loved about the earlier versions of the PSP, adding a few extra features (such as Bluetooth support) and cramming it all into a much more comfortably sized package. It seems to be becoming much more of a portable multimedia device than simply a handheld console, not only in its size but by eliminating the need to carry around a bunch of UMDs.

Robinson said that there was no indication at this stage as to the New Zealand RRP for the PSPgo, but said Sony expects to launch it here around the start of October. Anyway, that’s it from me this week. Keep an eye on Game Console over the next week for the latest news, Krog early next week and another blog from me in a week’s time. I’m off home in a couple of hours to have a jam on Wii Sports Resort as I try to forget about my beloved Xbox 360 while it's getting repaired. Have a sweet weekend!