PSP: The Definitive Verdict

After two weeks of intensive handheld gaming, we offer a comprehensive and detailed review of PSP, along with an extensive photo shoot, all-new high quality videos, and market analysis.

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By Adam Doree

It always seems to be around this cold time of year when the hottest new games machines hit Japanese stores, the time of year you'll find Kikizo staff scrambling at local import emporiums to pay ludicrous prices for the sexiest stuff to leave customs. This holiday season was no exception, as perhaps Sony's most eagerly awaited product of all time hit stores - in painfully low quantities.

That Hardware Buzz

For gamers like us, the buzz surrounding any major Japanese console launch is almost unbearably exciting, and it has to be said that PSP has generated one of the most flagrant since the dawn of this generation's consoles just over six years ago. But whereas the logistics of Nintendo's DS launch last month went relatively smoothly for retailers in North America and Japan, with more then sufficient supply to meet demand until the new year, Sony has found it very tough indeed to ramp up production quantities in time.

There's no doubt about the quality of Sony's handheld debut

The more cynical gamers have suggested that the strategy was deliberately executed to drum up as much anticipation and PR as possible - but that's quite unlikely to be the case. After an initial shipment to Japanese retailers of 193,056 units on December 12, of which around 166,000 units were sold on the first day, it took only a couple more days for the remaining units to sell out. But many gamers had their work cut out trying to find where the remaining stock was hiding, since all city locations had sold out and only Japan's more rural shopping locations had supply. In any case, Sony should by now have fulfilled its latest shipment of a further 100,000 units before the new year, although this doesn't yet appear to be confirmed.

Hot Property

The bottom line is that it's still very, very hard to get hold of a PSP no matter where you are. A significant volume of the initial Japanese stock went straight to those who had pre-ordered the console on Sony's website, which was jammed for hours when it opened a couple of months ago. You can either get as decent a deal as possible on eBay, where prices are still consistently at the $600 level, perhaps including one launch game.

Or you can opt for Kikizo's clever option of doing away with all the eBay hassle, approaching a friendly importer - and offering him full whack for his Value Pack before his stock even arrives. That pretty much gets you to the top of his pre-order list. And in the UK, you can expect to pay in the region of £500 for the Value Pack and a game - that's around $1,000 - so if we see any more US-based gamers crying at the cost of import PSPs, we may just politely point out the real cost of having a guaranteed unit in certain other parts of the world...

You can't beat opening a brand new piece of kit like this

Everyone knows that Nintendo has dominated the market for over fifteen years. The launch of the Game Boy in 1989 kicked off the longest running dominance any sector of the games business would ever have seen, and while rivals such as Sega and Atari challenged the handheld throne with products like the Game Gear and Lynx respectively, Nintendo's crown has remained unshakable. There is every chance that PSP could change all that, but with the new Nintendo DS proportionally off to a much stronger start than PSP sales-wise, one thing is for sure - it's going to be an interesting battle.

Continue Through Feature:

• Page 1: The Hardware Buzz, Hot Property
• Page 2: Two Weeks, Inside the Box, Build Quality
• Page 3: Secret Screen, Ergonomics, Triggers
• Page 4: Sleeping, Useful Buttons, Faulty Units
• Page 5: More on UMD, Make Some Noise
• Page 6: Thanks for the Memory, Battery Power
• Page 7: Full Whack Value Pack, Just Browsing
• Page 8: Movies and Music, Will You be My WiFi
• Page 9: It Plays Games Too - Performance
• Page 10: PSP vs DS, Final Thoughts

See also: Full Launch Report from Tokyo
               PSP Set for Launch in Japan
               PSP Launch Could be a Disaster