The Future of the PSP

IGN has a longish piece up looking at the possible future of Sony's handheld. They examine the upcoming success of Sony's overshadowed creation via several excellent interviews from people with SCEA, first-party developers, third-party studios, and indies. I particularly enjoyed the comments by indie homebrew dev Fanjita, who had a great outsider's view of the little black dynamo. "I suspect there are 2 factors that make them especially resistant to homebrew on the PSP - the first is that point I just made, about not wanting to dent the already shaky platform image. The second is that we already know our way around almost all the PSP internals, and so they probably feel that there's a risk that a publicly endorsed, restricted homebrew platform would soon be cracked wide open, leaving them with an officially endorsed route to piracy. I like to believe that the capable homebrew devs would be respectful of a move from Sony to open up the platform, but it's obviously impossible to have any guarantees."

A "casual gamer" speaks

[ed]

I am amazingly happy with my PSP

I play games at home and on the train

I watch films also when commuting

I can use it to check for WiFi hotspots, hit the web a few times and even check email

oh and play a bit of music and bore people with family photos

More fanboyism.

[dannycim]

I sat next to a guy playing his DS on the subway yesterday. I was playing Ratchet & Clank on my PSP. He stopped playing to look at my screen, with obvious envy. I listen to my MP3s (screen off, locked in my pocket, long battery life), I watch movies and anime, I read E-books, do a bit of web-surfing, and play a few games, so I'm really happy with the PSP.

I've had every type of gameboys and have always been frustrated by the displays. To me, the DS was a huge mistake. Instead of giving us two crappy small displays, they should have made it with one large one.

Re:A doorstop

[Doctor_Jest]

Ridge Racer 2 (portable ridge racer is awesome...)
Ultimate Ghosts and Goblins (fun!)
Metal Slug anthology
Platypus
Dungeon Siege: Throne of Agony (for everyone's slash/hack fix)
Generation of Chaos (very fun for those who like turn based strategy)
Gradius Collection (THIS is how you pass the time in the car!)
Wipeout Pure (fun fun... but hard!)
Valkyrie Profile (great game)
Legend of Heroes
Untold Legends (both hack and slash fun)
Tekken: Dark Resurrection (very nice... haven't noticed any smearing or anything...)
Capcom Puzzle World (Puzzle fighter!)
Namco Museum (the "reimagined" Galaga is dang fun)
SF3:Alpha Max
Sid Meier's Pirates (who wouldnt want to take that with you? )

Those are just off the top of my head. STILL not enough of a gaming device for you? You MUST be hard to please then... because there's more where those came from.... FF:tactics is getting a turn on the PSP... sounds like it'll be fun....

For the DS: (My DS)

FF 3, Tetris, Mario (of course) Advance Wars, Castlevania, and thats about all I've had time for... ;)

Eh.. I like 'em both.. but the sheer # of RPGs coming to the PSP, I'm more happy with that purchase....