Ah yes, I know - very bad pun!

While the blog was on hiatus, E3 happened and Sony announced the PSP Go!, a portable version of their already portable Playstation Portable (PSP)! The difference here is that the PSP Go incorporates bluetooth and Flash based storage, and gives up on the UMD drive.

The PSP Go is actually a pretty nice device! If I had some spare cash (and my PSP 1000 died) I would most likely buy one. There are of course some major fails for this device. The major fail for the device is that it uses Memory Stick Micro (aka M2) as its storage medium (if you go over the 16 GB of onboard flash memory). Memory stick micro? Are you kidding me? Of course Sony would pick their own proprietary standard... I would have liked to have seen microSD instead.

There are of course a couple of things that Sony could have added to soften the deal such as adding GPS and a front facing camera - the original PSP has add-ons for these, why not build them in? This would encourage game designers to actually incorporate these features into their games! The lack of a second analog controller is also a minus, and the fact that no one has mentioned how I can get my UMD games to play on a Go (perhaps I missed this)

A couple of outlandish features that I would have liked to have seen are touchscreen for a nice touch screen interface - for the web browser at least! - and a built in keyboard. Of course this is fastly approaching Sony Mylo territory and maybe Sony does not want to cross that line.

All things considered, I think that Sony despite their insistence that the PSP 3000 line isn't going anywhere and UMD is staying - I think UMD is on the way out. It is sad because this means that we as consumers also lose our right to sell our games when we don't want them anymore or to loan them to friends when we've had our fill.