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Opinion: The PSP has become a blunt Swiss Army Knife

Sony better get a whetstone out

Opinion: The PSP has become a blunt Swiss Army Knife
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PSP

There are several incontrovertible truths about the Swiss Army Knife - it was invented by the Swiss, made famous by their Army, and all variants contain at least one blade. Back when it was invented though, it was a pretty simple device: a blade, a screwdriver, a can opener and a punch were the original tools.

Over the years, it's got more complex. You can now buy knives containing laser pointers, USB drives, MP3 players, even an altimeter, while the most complicated version - admittedly created to celebrate the company's 100th anniversary - contained 85 different tools.

The parallels with the PSP are easy to spot.

Its blade was it was the best handheld gaming machine available. The launch line-up wasn't brilliant but Lumines, WipEout Pure, Metal Gear Acid, Archer Maclean's Mercury and Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories were all mighty decent games - some of them remain among the best on the system.

There were a few extras too - originally, sales of UMD-based movies were okay and before long, you could go online, use RSS feeds and download dedicated content to your PSP. Some people even used their PSPs as a default MP3 player as they travelled to work, just as in a similar way you may have relied on a Swiss Army Knife corkscrew to save what would have been an otherwise frustrating, wineless, picnic.

But creep happens. Just as the knife ended up with more tools that were less useful, so Sony's pushed the PSP into becoming the do-it-all-averagely-portable device.

  • GPS navigation as been added in the form of the Go!Explore, a module that costs around £100, or, for a PSP bundle, £220. (Or you could get a dedicated GPS navigation system for less than £140).
  • For £35 you can buy the 1.3 megapixel Go!Cam camera add-on. (Or you could get a 6 megapixel point-and-shoot camera for £50.)
  • In Japan, you can watch high definition TV, thanks to Sony's release of a 1seg TV tuner for PSP. We can't access such broadcast services in the West yet, but we can use Sony's LocationFree TV service to watch and control whatever's available on our wireless-enabled home entertainment system from anywhere in the world thanks to our PSP and a decent wi-fi connection. A base station costs around £200. (Or you could get Slingbox for £100.)
  • Then there was also the Talkman language translation application for tourists. It was unique - promising speech recognition - but ultimately didn't work.
  • Most recently, there's been the Skype and Go!Messenger product announcements, which will enable you to communicate with any of your logged-in chums, as long as you're also logged into a wireless network. (Or you could get a 3 Skypephone, which is free for 3's Pay Monthly customers.)
  • And, of course, there's the PSP's PlayStation 3 compatibility, offering options such as being able to download Blu-ray movies to your Memory Stick Duo and use your PSP as a controller for PS3 games. (You need a PlayStation 3 - £300 - for this.)

So there's certainly no argument that, as with a Swiss Army Knife, there are a lot of different things you can do with a PSP. The question for Sony however is, if it doesn't ensure that the quality of PSP games is getting better - both those it makes and those from other publishers - does it think punters would bother with all these other things?

Or to put another way, despite the options of tweezers, magnifying glass and pliers etc, would anyone really buy a blunt Swiss Army Knife?

Jon Jordan
Jon Jordan
A Pocket Gamer co-founder, Jon can turn his hand to anything except hand turning. He is editor-at-large at PG.biz which means he can arrive anywhere in the world, acting like a slightly confused uncle looking for the way out. He likes letters, cameras, imaginary numbers and legumes.