It was March 24^th, 2005, and I had a wad of cash saved up from my shoe stocking job at Sears. I had researched the launch games, had kept up with the coverage, and was hyped beyond my original expectations: the PSP was finally coming out, and I was about to take it home with me.

As I drove straight from Gamestop to my first morning lecture class at my local college, I started to peel the shrinkwrap from my launch game purchases at every red light. The smell of new plastic started to fill my car as I stripped each security seal from the top of the boxes and wrapped it around the discarded cellophane, creating a plastic ball of wrapping not unlike the birthday and Christmas balls after a hearty dose of new gifted electronics. Unlike those days however, I knew exactly what I was getting…no need for any fake joy or reasoned expectations as I stripped each game of its shrinkwrap. Wipeout Pure. Lumines. Ape Escape. Ridge Racer. It was but a fraction of the twenty four titles available at launch, quite possibly one of the most diverse and best lineup of games ever launched with a handheld or console.

As I settled into my seat in the lecture room, I plugged in my PSP underneath the desk and threw in Wipeout Pure. I don’t think anything really prepared me for the visual splendor of having such an amazing looking game running on a handheld. Oh sure, I had seen videos of it in action. I realized it was running on PSP hardware. But it doesn’t really “click” until you have the thing in your hands, watching on that crisp LCD screen, realizing that you’re playing the future of handheld devices. It was easily my favorite launch experience of all the consoles and handhelds I ever bought.

I take a moment to remember some of my favorite releases for the PSP. The time I picked up N+ used for eight dollars, not knowing exactly what it was, and having dozens of hours of fun. The moment where I put in Grand Theft Auto and the realization that I had a true GTA game running on my PSP as I drove down the streets of Liberty City. The sheer euphoria I had playing Lumines for the first time. I don’t exactly remember how I felt playing Tetris for the first time, but I’d imagine it felt like my first time with Lumines...the puzzle aspect and music just clicking together seamlessly. The mind-bending puzzles of Crushed, or the unique card battles found in Metal Gear Ac!d 2, one of my all time favorite games. The technology of Mercury, the scale of God of War, so many memories from gaming with the PSP, all uniquely tied to the fact that yes, I was playing these games on a handheld, and it was damn awesome.

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Over the course of the years I was sucked into the work of Roger Ebert as he gave the weekly thumbs up or down to the upcoming movies each week. His style of writing was easy to get into, and soon I had purchased several of his review compilation yearbooks and both “I Hated, Hated, Hated this Movie” and “Your Movie Sucks” books. It was entertaining reading, though it had never occurred to me that I might want to be a film critic someday. It was never a feasible idea or career to have, though it lingered in my brain as I began my Communication degree studies and took classes in journalism.

As I was browsing the Home Theater Forum, one DVD reviewer asked in a post whether anyone had heard of the UMD format, and if someone would take over the job of reviewing some of the movies he received from his rep. I quickly agreed, and thus had carved my own little niche of being one of the only major UMD movie reviewers on the internet.

I took my job seriously as the UMDs poured in from the mail. I started my own UMD magazine that ran through the PSP’s browser. I created a PSP formatted website and soon was republishing older reviews on the main PSP IGN channel. Soon a Newsweek article appeared with the financial success of UMD Movies; this format, it seemed, was the next big thing in the movie market.

The funny thing was that I had no idea what kind of market UMD Movies were appealing to. Certainly not to me, as I had a nice home theater system that I would always rather use instead of the PSP screen. Perhaps, I reasoned, it was people who didn’t have home theater setups and would rather buy their movies on a portable format instead (around that time there was no way of displaying the PSP’s screen on a TV). Maybe the movie studios felt the same way, as they started to release movies for upwards of $30 a title, with little to no extras.

It was a fun job as I met a lot of interesting people. I remember when my IGN review of a Silver Platter skateboarding video made it’s way to the back of the UMD case with the “Editor’s Choice” award, and how it felt that at that exact moment, I was an actual movie reviewer. When I read a comment on how someone shared similar tastes to mine as he read my reviews, and it felt like I was writing for somebody, rather than to anybody. Alas, UMD Movies were starting to dwindle down as studios essentially crushed the format with high prices and little value, and once the HD-DVD/Blu-Ray war started, there’s was little space left for the UMD format in the aisles. My hobby as a movie reviewer was over.

***

PSP homebrew back then was a more innocent time of finding flash games to work via the PSP browser. I would release Arcade Packs from time to time as I would try to find small flash games and package them all together via a HTML page of links. But hacking of the PSP was underway, something that never interested me even to this day, though I could start to see the seams of the PSP start to tear, never more so than when I went to get an oil change one day. As they called my name and I placed my PSP on the counter, the clerk started to ask me about my PSP and what games I had, and so on. He then told me about a cool website that had every game released on the PSP, and for just $20 a month you could have unlimited downloads of any game on the site. I realized in that moment that this guy probably had no idea what he was doing was piracy. Looking at the website, it presented itself in such a professional manner that I had to make sure that Sony hadn’t rolled out some kind of game sharing plan I wasn’t aware of.

As the years went by, I spent less and less time on the PSP. Perhaps it was the game selection, or the changing schedules I had with different jobs, or simply the nature of a console/handheld to depreciate over time. I had my fun with the PSP, occasionally booting it up for a game or two, but all in all it gave me a lot...whether that was blowing time at work to creating a small job and building my writing skills, I had enough to be thankful for in investing in the PSP.

And then there were the rumors of a new PSP system. It seemed to be a follow-up to the PSP and not necessarily the next generation of handhelds...a stopgap in a way. Soon it would be revealed to be the PSPgo, a downloadable games-only system with a sleek style and some better features. The price was a premium, and was hard to honestly justify, but I saw it as something that might rejuvenate my interests in the PSP. I was sold on it, more than most perhaps because as an indie game dev I had no problems going downloadable-only and having my money go more towards the devs behind the titles I bought.

On October 1^st, 2009, I walked into Gamestop and bought a white PSPgo, a charging base, and a screen protector. There was no plastic wrapping in my car this time, just a blister pack for the charger and a sticker for the PSPgo box. Nothing to read or break out of its case. Nothing much to do during those red lights going back home. I didn’t have as much excitement, as this was something I’ve already owned so I knew what to expect obviously. I walked into my living room, plugged in my system, began updating the firmware and started the slow process of downloading games. I’ve read a lot of arguments against digital distribution, most of them usually not very good, but I’ll be damned if in that instance I didn’t miss the mess of shrinkwrap, the quick toss and play nature of UMDs, and not putting any cases on my game shelf. It was such a sterile launch day experience, almost bordering on depressing given the great launch of the original PSP.

But still, this was the shot in the arm that the PSP needed, I thought to myself. Here we have a pseudo-launch day of game titles like Gran Turismo, Motorstorm and other games that might push the system hard during the holidays. I couldn’t wait to download some of my favorites like Metal Gear Ac!d 2, N+, Lumines and others on the PSN store. I waited for that day. Nearly a year later, I’m still waiting.

I suppose I didn’t think about what I was doing at the time of selling my original PSP on eBay and buying a PSPgo. I was, in fact, signing an exclusive contract with Sony that I would purchase all future PSP games from now on in the Playstation Store. I wouldn’t be able to trade and buy used games at Gamestop anymore, or participate in big UMD sales at Target, etc. That was fine with me at the time, because I knew Sony’s commitment to the downloadable future. But now I wonder how I could misplace my trust so foolishly like that. Every time I walk into a store and see a PSP game I’d like to buy on sale, I can’t. Every time a game title is released but is not released concurrently on the Playstation Store, I’m screwed. Anytime a game utilizes hardware attachments to the PSP but not the PSPgo, well, I won’t be able to participate. Why? Because I bought the $100 premium version of the PSP, that’s why.

Do I really care that I can’t play Invisimals or Eyepet on my PSPgo since it lacks the camera attachment port? No, I wasn’t ever interested in those titles anyways. What bothers me is Sony’s indifference to Go owners as shown in this Playstation Blog post/reply:

Did I expect Sony to have a separate Go camera based on the sales so far of the system? No, I didn’t at all. Do I want to really play these games? Nah, not really. So what’s the problem? There is no problem, I guess. There shouldn’t be, anyways.

And yet I feel frustrated, almost angry in a way, because I was fooled into buying a system that was $100 more expensive than the original PSP, with hardware that’s five years old, in a software market that’s dwindling down to almost nothing, and what do I have to show for it? What has Sony given me in return for my trust? A new firmware update that allows me to organize my download purchases into folders? No. Some kind of work around so that Go owners aren’t left in the cold for these kinds of games? No. Any kind of Go only titles that might make use of the extra hardware or something? Anything? I can’t even sell it for nearly the amount I paid for it judging by some recent eBay auctions. I’m stuck with this machine.

What’s Sony’s response to all the slow sales? Why, a new marketing campaign lead by Marcus, a young black kid that dishes out the pain in Kevin Butler-esque commercials. One commercial has someone showing Marcus some iPhone games, with Marcus bringing down the world of hurt as he dismisses phones as not being built for “big boy” games, and showing off the greatest hits lineup of $10 games such as Twisted Metal and Hot Shots Golf.

Is Sony unaware of their Minis lineup being some ports of popular iPhone games? Or iPhone games even being ported to the PS3? Not unaware so much as they are indifferent to it. Never mind that new games still cost $30-40 and the $10 PSP games lineup shown on the commercial were years old. I have no problem paying $40 for an “actual” game. But when I can get a lot of enjoyment out of sub-$10 games, I have to ask myself why I’d still be paying $40 for handheld games.

I wrote this almost as a eulogy for the PSP. Certainly the system still has a few games left up its sleeve as it crosses into its sixth holiday season. It’s not completely dead. But I’m writing this at a time where, according to NeoGAF user “a Master Ninja,” Sony is contacting retailers to destroy their stock of vouchers for the PSP and PSPgo. I felt inspired to write this as one might be inspired to think of all the good times they’ve had with an older relative as they are admitted to the hospital. They’ve been there before and have come out ok, but for some reason you feel like this time is...different. Maybe the PSP will come out alright until the next year. Maybe I’ll be able to get some use out of my Go after all, and enjoy it like I have with the PSP for so many years. It’s nice to think about all these things.

But deep down, we all know how this is going to end. Most knew how it would end a long time ago. Perhaps I’m the last one to give up hope. Almost on cue, there’s Marcus in the background speaking on the TV behind me, telling me to “step my game up.” Who is he talking to?

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Check out my indie game releases over at www.vertigogaming.net. Thanks for reading!