PSP's missed opportunities
Sorry for not having written for a long time. I have been really too busy with everything. Anyways, a week ago, someone said the PSP was a missed opportunity for Sony, that incredibly with yet another higher-quality product, they did a Betamax out of themselves. I read the article, I pondered on it a little bit more and I tried to look at what went wrong with this product.
Of course the product is more than a match to anything that happened in the portable console market. Usually they are off the chart for any specs, at a very small size and very attractive and professional package. (Note about the screen size of that article, DS has 2 screens, and they are only showing one. That graph is not representative)
I do not think it's too late, but it's certainly later, and it would need a nice rethinking. So what went wrong? What could be made better?
Of course they made the UMD. Universal (but proprietary and closed to the PSP) Media Disc. Other than the pompous name, they are not more or less worse than a Nintendo DS's cartridge. With the added bonus of being able to put other things in there, not only a game. UMDs are not a success as a movie media. Simple, there are no other players, you cannot plug them on your HD television. What could be done is a small USB plugin that would transfer the UMD contents (At 48 megs per second, it's more than a match for the UMD speed), and send them to a high-quality decoder for your TV. A small dongle, potentially USB-powered, with a HDMI connector. Easy and might potentially be used by games too. No need to even have a UMD player, only the small dongle.
Let's look at all the menus, in order.
All these parameters. There are many parameters. Too many. Way too many. 12 items in the menu, not counting the submenus, not counting the options. You can so something about that, engineers, come on!
Photo. A nifty new feature is called "Camera". It made me salivating to no extreme. However, it did not live up to the expectation. What it is really is a way to plug in a "PSP Camera". Try to find that anywhere… oops, no existie. Japan only. For more than a hundred bucks, you get a standard webcam equivalent. Not only is it here in all the software updates for all countries, but you cannot even get the camera here. How did I find that out? First, I selected "Camera", and I get greeted with the very friendly "Connect a camera that is compatible with the PSP(tm) system to the USB connector". Fair play. I plug in the DSC-T9, a high-profile small camera from Sony. Of course it did not work. I searched over the Internet, I looked everywhere and then I could figure out there was only one compatible camera. Yeehaa. So how to correct this? Easy: make ALL Sony cameras compatible. And if you cannot change the firmware for the camera, change the PSP firmware.
Music. How to transfer music? From Internet (yay) and from the Memory Stick (yay). You could be lucky and have a UMD with music too (yay). 3 nice ways. How do you buy the songs? … … mmm … well, you could by UMD. Theoretically. So what is missing here? Internet music streaming for starters, then a way to buy music from the Internet and put it on your UMD. With Sony Connect debacle, I kind of understand why it's not there yet, but it's no excuse. Video is the same, by the way. With Sony's artistic background, they so have no reason to forget that.
Game. You can do everything and anything, except buying games over the Internet. Wii does it. X360 does it. Every big console does it. Why be stuck with the UMD again? Oh yes, they are pushing that medium. Oh and please please correct the "Saved Data Utility". Only with Wipeout, I got more than 50 saved datas, and they are all in a nice little list. Please sort them, make them in groups, make them work together. Hell, that's no utility, it's only a list with some delete option.
Network. LocationFree(tm) player. That's the opposite, to be able to play TV on your PSP. Of course again with their superb device that is not available anywhere. Good idea. But it should be able to do the opposite at the same time. Remote, for PS3? Nice idea again. RSS, cool. Internet, add what is missing to buy, stream, download and make everything sexier.
Let's see the pattern here.
UMD - proprietary to the PSP only. Not even Sony-wide, PSP.
Camera - proprietary to the PSP only. Not even Sony-wide, PSP.
Music - missing a way to buy over the Internet. UMD? Please.
Video - missing a way to buy over the Internet. UMD? Please.
Game - missing a way to buy over the Internet. UMD? Sure. But not as only means.
LocationFree - proprietary to Sony, made for PSP and PC.
Remote - proprietary to PS3.
Either proprietary, or missing a way to buy over the Internet. All of this is simple to fix theoretically, engineers will have fun but that's not my problem 
And frankly, it's not over for them, but it's getting late. For the DS to trump the card of the PSP shows how much they are in there underground.
