Five years ago yesterday the Playstation Portable was released in America.
Above is pictured the limited edition, Japan only Monster Hunter lithographed PSP-3000. Although I don’t own this unit (and likely never will due to the price) I do own two different PSP handhelds.
I bought my first the day it was released: March 24 2005, the for (in retrospect) staggering price of $249.99. I also purchased 3 games for the system: Lumines, Metal Gear AC!D and Darkstalkers. From the start I was a fan of the system, and although the games were fun, it didn’t seem very long before I thought more about what games could be on the system than what actually was.
It would be about 18 months (during which I purchased 13 games) before the first truly astounding (for me) game was released on the PSP. Capcom took their hard-as-nails Monster Hunter series from the PS2, and relaunched it as a portable game series with Monster Hunter Freedom:
I was all over this game. It was so perfectly suited to the PSP that finally the system appeared to have the game it was designed for. This would become – for many PSP users – the defining series for the system, so important to the brand that it would single-handedly allow the PSP to compete with the DS in Japan. In future years two more iterations of the series would be released:
Of course I purchased both and played them like a man possessed. I am not exaggerating when I say that of the 61 total PSP games I own (I bought one per month on average??), I have probably spent more time playing these three titles than the other 58 combined. They are ruthless, complex and impenetrable to casual gamers, but pure bliss for enthusiasts such as myself.
A day or two before Monster Hunter Freedom 2 was released I purchased the newly released PSP-2000 model (also known as the PSP ‘slim’), which was lighter, sexier, had longer battery life and at $170 was quite a bit less expensive. This is the model I still play today, although two newer versions have been released since (the incrementally updated PSP-3000 and the ill-fated and download-only PSP-Go).
As mentioned I have 61 games for the system, about 75% of which are RPGs. The most I have paid for a game is Y6300 (about US$60) for a very rare copy of the limited edition Wizardry Empire III (currently unplayed). The least I have paid I was $4.98 (Dragonball Evolutions, also currently unplayed).
The future of the system doesn’t seem rosy. Sales have been dropping sharply in the last year, and in recent months Sony has been releasing games in digital download-only format. This is probably to drive PSP-Go sales and probably to fight back against rampant piracy. As a game collector I’m not a big fan of digital downloads and refuse to buy any such games. This is problematic, since three such games are of interest to me (including Eye Of Judgement, however each were released on UMD in England so I hope to buy the disc during my trip.
Very few games have been announced that I am interested in (digital or non-digital) and it is difficult to imagine where the system will be a year from now. Many suspect a new PSP to be announced in the next few months (PSP2?), and were it not for the next Monster Hunter game as well as a few other quirky titles (which I doubt will even come stateside) I’d start thinking it’s almost time to pack up the system for good.
< Quirky enough?
At five years old and 60-odd million sold the PSP can hardly be called a failure. And yet it is a system that has only a small handful of truly superb games on it. Given that amongst this handful are some of the best (albeit unforgivingly difficult and hardcore) games I have ever played (in ~30 years of gaming) it’s easy to see why I’m fond of the system. But objectively, I’d have to say that for most players the PSP has never quite lived up to its potential.
My biggest complaint with the PSP is that the battery doesn’t hold its charge for long enough. Play/juice it up regularly and you’re fine. Put it down for a week or two and you’ll return to find it dead – guaranteed. Unlike the DS.