PSP Go Fondled: E3 Hands-On Impressions

From the Vault — originally published June 5, 2009. Some links, videos or prices may be out of date.

So the leak was pretty much almost dead on. The PSP Go was announced and then shown at E3. Luckily it was also on display in the Sony area at E3 and I was able to hi-jack play with it for a while. I played Motorstorm: Arctic Edge, and Little Big Planet PSP on it before feeling like a total douche for hogging it. (Stay tuned for impressions on those) I must say in all fairness that photos do not do it justice. The device is much sleeker when you see the real thing.

Thanks to the random guy who held the PSP’s while I took that photo above. He was really cool and patient because I hogged the thing for quite some time while he waited for a shot. The screen is also smaller by about a half of an inch total though I was told that the smaller screen has the same resolution as the older screens so the games will look sharper on the PSP Go. The top slides up to reveal the controls. The D-pad and face buttons are all recessed and it does feel different at first but oddly enough I prefer the recessed buttons over that which is on the older 2000 and 3000 models. There are silver bumper button on the top of the unit under the screen when the screen is flipped up. All of the buttons had a very good feel to them. Its also a relief that the power switch is no longer on the side of the unit. I would occasionally switch my PSP 2000 off by mistake while button mashing because the the horrid power switch placement on older models.

The overall unit is smaller than the old PSP models and a bit larger than an iPhone. There is no UMD drive and the rep at Sony told me that they are working on a way to allow UMD games to be ported onto the PSP Go. This mystery detail is a huge deal for so many that it will interesting to see how it pans out. The PSP Go will ship with 16GB internal memory and will have a slot for additional memory via a Memory Stick Micro slot. In other words, your current memory stick will be useless if you switch to the go system.

The bottom line is that with hand held systems smaller really is better. There are no new additional buttons or analog sticks in this new device. So yes, we wanted an additional analog stick and we are teased with start and select buttons precisely where we wanted the right analog stick. I must say that the lack of an additional analog stick is my biggest problem with the unit. The smaller screen is not as much of a minus as I thought it would be and the recessed buttons are great. Provided that the UMD porting solution is reasonable when announced Sony might very well have a winner with the PSP Go.