Redesigned PSP, PSP 2.0 Or Just Leave It?

Roughly five minutes after the PSP hit store shelves whispers began circulating around the net that a redesign was in the cards, these rumors rose to a mild rumbling as gamers began to realise that while the PSP was sexy looking piece of kit, it did have a number of design flaws.

Find out whether the PSP should be redesigned, abandoned completely, or left just the way it is, after the jump!

Roughly five minutes after the PSP hit store shelves whispers began circulating around the net that a redesign was in the cards, these rumors rose to a mild rumbling as gamers began to realise that while the PSP was sexy looking piece of kit, it did have a number of design flaws.

– Only one analog knob (one knob to rule them all): Nintendo figured out back in the 32bit era with the N64 that a single analog stick is inadequate when it comes to articulate control in three dimensions. Intelligent developers like Sony Bend and Zipper Interactive have managed to work around this by mapping functions traditionally allocated to the second analog stick to the PSP’s face buttons, with varying degrees of success. A second analog stick would free four buttons up, giving the console greater functionality and making it more suited to fluid control in 3D environments.

– Nub placement: Bad enough that there’s only one stick, but did they have to stick it in a position where it’ll cause sever thumb crampage? I have no idea what sort of placement would be better, but that’s why I’m not a highly paid hardware engineer, this one could use some finxin’ boys.

– The UMD Disc format: They look cute as all heck, and people “oooh”, and “ahh,” when you pop ’em out to show ’em off, but the UMD disc format has caused more bad for the PSP than good. First off is the fact that it’s just too darn slow to load, granted this could be improved with a hardware revision that upgrades the drive seek time but it still takes time to start spinning the drive. Speaking of spinning drives, this and the laser needed to read the discs uses up a fair amount of the PSP’s already precious battery power that most of us would rather conserve if we had the choice. Lastly, the UMD format has a fixed capacity at 1.8GB, we’re already seeing flash memory that more than quadruples its storage capacity and has lower power consumption and faster seek times.

So now we’ve listed some of the problems that need to be tackled but what’s the best option for the job, a redesign or  a full blown successor to the hardware? That’s still a tough question, let’s have a deeper look shall we?

The Redesign: A redesign could take care of most of the problems if not all of them, and it would probably be cheaper for Sony to manufacture as they’d be able to implement new power saving technology developed since the PSP’s launch and possibly shrink die sizes. However, a redesign would mean that a very large percentage of PSP gamers would be left with the original older units, units that have only one analog nub (ruh-roh!) This would effectively split the user base in half, granted it’s been done before with the PSOne and its move from the original controller (which had no analog sticks) to the Dual Shock, (which had two) but that was a $40 peripheral, not the entire console.

Releasing a redesign would be akin to asking your entire user base to chuck their current hardware down the poop shoot and plonk down some hard earned dough to get a swanky new PSP – Lite. The reason Nintendo’s been so successful with their GBA and DS redesigns is that the basic functionality of the system was carried over. For a PSP redesign to work Sony could conceivably get away with changing the position of the nub, and possibly even nixing the UMD drive, but every console would still have only one nub and that’s a problem.

The PSP2: For the record, “PSP2” would be really lame name, but in the absence of something more creative we’ll go with it for now. A PSP2 would be Sony’s best bet for fixing all the design flaws in the PSP and they could include upgraded hardware components, increased memory, faster processing chips, include a hard drive, the whole deal. Plus they’d have the benefit of hindsight and experience in the handheld sector to better design the beast. The big question is whether gamers feel the time is right to purchase the PSP’s successor, the console’s only been out for just a little over a year and many feel it’s only now beginning to gain some momentum. There’s also the fact that we’re yet to see the full potential of the PSP, the clock is still locked at 222MHz and dammit, I want to see some 333MHz games before I have to drop another $250 on a new handheld!

In the end it’s almost a given Sony’s explored both possibilities, and if I were a betting man I hedge my bet on Sony not releasing a PSP2 or a PSP – Lite for a while to come. The PSP is doing just fine at the moment (it actually beat out the DS in sales for the month of May) and the platform is finally starting to get some good games, Sony realises this and knows how much time and effort developers are putting into the system. Releasing a PSP2 or a PSP – Lite right now would be pulling the rug out from under developers and worse, consumers.

So what say you guys, PSP2, a redesign, or just leave it as it is?