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Updated as often as I can manage |
Sunday, December 12, 2004
Yep, thanks to the sterling folks at Lik-Sang I am now in possession of one (1) PlayStation Portable. Sadly, thanks to a snafu I'd rather not explain I don't have any games yet. Still, the PSP's the all-singing-all-dancing-music-playing-movie-watching uberportable, right? So I should be OK until tomorrow just fiddling around with it.
I have to say though: This is one sexy piece of kit. I'm going to start from the beginning here, so forgive me if I repeat what you've heard already (and this is my first time with a real PSP, so I can't tell you whether it's the same/better/worse than the earlier demos at TGS and E3). The front is made of one solid piece of plastic -- there isn't a seperate bit covering the LCD, it's all one shiny piece. It attracts fingerprints much like the back of an iPod does, though I don't find myself constantly wiping it like I would with the iPod, possibly because being plastic it doesn't attract scratches or dirt like the iPod's metal backing ("YOU SCRATCHED MY iPOD! YOU WILL DIE!" etc). The back plate is a simple piece of black plastic that doesn't feel as smooth as a new Dual Shock but gives good grip. The two halves are held together by a ring of painted silver plastic (think GBA SP/DS here).
There are a couple of REALLY nice design touches here. One is on the UMD drive plate: There's a metal ring with the PSP logo inside it (real metal, oooh, aaah). The other is that all the buttons are actually transparent, which is most apparent on the triggers. More than one person has picked it up, clicked the triggers almost accidentally and gone "WOW, those are buttons too?"
Size-wise... well, the pictures tell the story here. It's somewhat awkward since it's pretty damned long (don't even think about sticking this in your pocket), but it's also smaller than I thought it'd be and certainly more slick than the cumbersome DS. There's little in the way of wasted space on the PSP; the screen dominates the front and leaves just enough space for the buttons to comfortably fit, while the battery and UMD drive take up over two-thirds of the back side. It's worth talking about the battery, actually: It's massive. It isn't heavy, thankfully, but if you take it out of the unit you'll notice that the battery bay leaves no room for errant circuits on that side of the PSP. (I imagine the legendary Sony water-bucket test was applied several times to the PSP)
It feels great in your hands, though. Of course, some hardcore game playing might change my opinion, but the d-pad, shoulders and main buttons are positioned really nicely, and since the two ends (either side of the UMD drive cover) bulge slightly you get a really good grip on the unit. But here I have some gripes: Some of the buttons don't really feel very good. The triggers have a nice click to them, but they feel both loose and somehow too tight, like they're snagging something on the way in. And while the X, O and Triangle buttons feel fine (a little more clicky than the Dual Shocks but not overly so -- nice!), my Square button feels slightly off-centre; you have to push it more to the right as you're hitting it, because it seems to be leaning to the left (and pushing it in like that makes it less clicky and more mushy). I'm hoping it's just temporarily stuck and will unstick with a bit of work (like the stuck B buttons on GameCube controllers), because in terms of size they're great -- certainly better than the undersized buttons on the DS. Actually, I think they're as big as the original Game Boy's buttons, though I can't find mine to compare.
The jury is still out on the little analog stick, though. Actually, it's less stick than "disc" -- instead of a mini-joystick, this sort of slides around the surface of the PSP. It's pretty cool really, though it feels like it needs more "give" to it, since there isn't much room to move it around. The biggest problem with it though is that it's too far down the PSP: Unlike the Dual Shock, it's not down and to the side (allowing your thumb to rotate towards it, still keeping the same length extended), just directly down, so you have to totally adjust your grip.
Of course those aren't the only buttons on the PSP -- this thing is absolutely overflowing with them. The start/select/home/volume/etc buttons are basic and don't really have a nice click to them, but I don't particularly care since I doubt I'll be trying to smack them in gameplay or anything (I hope not, anyway). Then there's the UMD drive release (feels like a MiniDisc, satisfying click included), the Wi-Fi switch (is this really necessary?), and the Power/Hold switch. The latter is typical Sony: Slide up to switch it on and it'll power the unit and spring back to "neutral". You can then either slide it up again to switch it off or slide it down to put the PSP on "Hold" (think MP3 players). You know, I have this same control with my Clie and I STILL think it's horribly unintuitive. I keep pushing it down to switch it off!
This leaves just one thing to talk about: The screen. Dear lord, it's gorgeous. I've been running my pictures through it, and it looks great. It's absolutely friggin' huge for a start (as you can see, the screen alone is roughly the size of an iPod!), very bright, and very colourful. Of course, without actual games there isn't much to say about it. The little PSP interface is neat, though. Lots of options, easy to navigate (you can select English!), and the picture/music options are pretty simple. I can't get movies to work, sadly, since Sony hasn't yet posted that Image Converter 2 software they were supposed to. Oh, and it appears that it's online out of the box via Wi-Fi -- I've already set up a profile for it to access my home network (which again was quick and painless). Though without a game, all this allowed me to do was check for a system update (predictably, my PSP is up to date)...
Bottom line is you have to wait for the games to really tell how good PSP is or is not. But on pure gadget terms, the PSP really scores on the cool factor. Hell, I FEEL cooler owning it (even though I feel like a bit of a douche owning it without any games -- damnit, where's my Ridge Racers). And though it's really impractical as an MP3 player, being able to watch a few movies would be neat too, especially seeing as this screen blows away even those Microsoft Portable Media Centres.
Now... where are my damn games?
Posted at 7:03 AM
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