PSP

The Playstation Portable, or PSP for short, has been released with improved models since its original release, such as the PSP-2000 and the PSP-3000. Although, the newer PSP's haven't changed too much in physical appearance, except for its size. The PSP-1000 is also called PSP Phat, the PSP-2000 can be called PSP Slim, and the PSP-3000 is also called PSP Brite. Many people prefer the PSP to the Nintendo handhelds, like the Nintendo DS, because of its multimedia features. It can play music, play videos, connect to the internet, and play games through the UMD drive, with UMD being an acronym for Universal Media Disc. The PSP is aimed at children to teenagers.

A unique characteristic of the PSP is the use of firmware. There is official firmware and custom firmware, and they are both updated from time to time. Custom firmware is more popular, because it allows the user to download games and do things on the PSP one normally couldn't do with the official firmware, such as homebrew. Homebrew is software and games that are created by people at home, instead of people at those big companies. However, custom firmware is created by hackers and Sony keeps updating its official firmware to fix bugs and glitches, add other functions and prevent users from using custom firmware or homebrew. With the older models of the PSP, one could download custom firmware and it would remain, but with the newer PSP's such as the PSP Brite, and the newer PSP Slim, the custom firmware would disappear when one turned the power off. So in order to keep it, they must make the PSP 'sleep' instead.

The newest PSP that hasn't been released yet is called the PSP Go. Sony seems to be copying Apple with how they're changing their products' physical appearance more drastically than before, like how Apple was with iPod Touch and now Sony with PSP Go. The PSP Go is now a slider, so the PSP could be smaller. Unlike the other PSP's, there is no UMD drive so all games are downloaded through the Playstation Store. In addition, the PSP Go lacks the ability to remove the battery. However, the built-in 16 gigabytes of memory compensates for the irremovable battery. If 16 gigabytes isn't enough, one could change the memory stick to get more memory. That is a lot of gigabytes to store one's games, music, videos, and pictures. Personally, I'm not very sure about whether or not the PSP Go will be very successful. Nowadays, the sales for PSP games haven't been that great, but the device itself has been selling pretty well. The reason is that everyone buys PSP now so they can use custom firmware to download games for free. The PSP Go is attractive, appearance-wise, but will it be able to run custom firmware? If it is unable to run custom firmware, that will cost Sony a lot of customers.