Sony’s most recent PlayStation Portable gaming console model, the PSP Go, will soon be discontinued worldwide.
The PSP Go was launched in India a few months ago, but the response hasn’t exactly been admirable. One of the biggest drawbacks of the PSP Go is the lack of the UMD drive, rendering it unable to play any existing PSP game titles which are being sold in game stores all over the country. Games for the PSP Go have to be bought online and downloaded via the PlayStation Store, which isn’t a mechanism that has been accepted very well by the Indian audience. A part of the reason is the below average bandwidth available to most users in the country and the other part is that we’re still not completely comfortable with spending Rs. 1,500-2,000 on “virtual” digital downloads which we can’t physically store away. Then there was also the issue of region locking…
Sony is no doubt concentrating all its efforts on it’s new NGP, which is a much more powerful version of the normal PSP, but it’s obvious to note that their PSP Go strategy of a discless, online-delivery gaming ecosystem is going to continue on with the Sony Ericsson Xperia Play gaming smartphone, which looks almost exactly like a PSP Go. However, existing PSP Go games cannot be played directly on the Xperia Play, which means new games will have to be developed for it, and even if you’ve purchased a PSP Go title that’s been ported to the Xperia Play, you’ll have to buy it again for the phone.
The Sony Ericsson Xperia Play gaming smartphone
While the last stocks of the PSP Go disappear from stores, you will continue to see the non-Go PSP-3000 in stores available for sale. And there’s no problem picking one of those up now – you’ve got thousands of great games available on UMD for the system and new, upcoming, big-ticket releases such as Final Fantasy Type-0 and much-awaited Resident Evil Portable – the first of the RE series to be available on the PSP – so let go of the Go and go get a normal PSP!
Update: April 21st – looks like the PSP Go isn’t gone yet – at least not in the US – according to Sony. Either ways, we’re not too happy or too sad about this!
