When people buy an iPod or a notebook they’re buying into Apple, they’re buying into a brand, a lifestyle – something bigger than the sum of the parts.

So yeah – this Sony PSP product might be ‘all that’ but what do you get when you buy it?? I suggest, just the PSP – and maybe that’s what Mr Stringer has a job to do.

I would imagine the PSP is, like the i-Pod, completely universal. And that, for me, is the smart conversation. It does everything, with anything. And everyone knows how to operate a PS2.

But that brand/lifestyle only really matters to other Apple owners. When you buy an Ipod you get a music player (possibly a picture viewer if you get the latest one) and an identification with a certain,small group of consumers.

A PSP gives you that and so much more with a n already growing home-brew scene.
I can’t see how buying into the Apple lifestyle gives any benefit apart from the supposed ‘coolness’.

Anyway, considering that the store shelves are piled high with PSPs these days, the expected bonanza of sales clearly didn’t happen. A friend of mine bought one (he works at Sony, and got a good deal), so I had a chance to check it out.

Yes, it plays neat games – and allegedly it can also be used to play back music and video.

Well, if you play by SONY’s rules.

Of course, the PSP has internal memory expansion using SONY’s proprietary Memory Stick Duo technology – 1 gb costs roughly $200, which is nearly 4 times the cost of competing formats; furthermore, while it has a DVD-like mechanism, it can only utilize SONY’s (again, proprietary) UDM DVD format disks, in a custom cartridge. There is no way to record on these, yet.

DVD movie media will be provided by SONY, in the UDM format, at a cost of $20 a pop – considering that regular movies can be picked up at far less, on sale, I doubt very much that SONY and Disney (both of which are delusional that their titles will sell in that format) will make any kind of money on that front.

You can import movies and music from you computer, via a clumsy USB interface, by dragging the files to the PSP using various tools. Note: the PSP does not automatically detect USB connectivity, nor can you save anywhere else but the memory card (see the price/storage ratio earlier).

So, while the PSP would be a great platform to carry movies with you (the screen is great, and the speakers are decent), the design and engineering hamper that use.

Oh yeah, there is absolutely no video out on the PSP either – so forget abot plugging it into any sort of video display.

What SONY should have done (IMO), to have this thing fly off the shelves, would be to think a bit creatively, and most of all, to think a bit pre-emptively.

- Either provide a 20gb hard drive, or provide a media bay on the back that allows switching in either the UDM player, or a hard drive module to provide storage.

- release an external UDM recorder, with FireWire or USB2 connection, to encourage the release of content for the PSP.

- sell UDM recordable cartridges ($$$)

- provide software (Mac and PC) that allows automatic synchronisation of Music and Images on the desktop machine with playlists/albums on the PSP.

- provide a direct connection to the SONY Connect service (as they won’t support anything else, anyway, because they are still stupid), allowing a PSP interface to download music directly.

- Support AAC/MP4 music format, to be able to claim ‘iTunes Compatible’ (not iTMS compatible, though).

- Provide video out (Duh!)

- Start an alternate service to Connect, that provides Sony movies, as well as TV shows in PSP format, and available to download ONLY via the PSP. This way, Sony would have an immediate entry in the video download business, and by being first, has the potential to dominate that market — this would have been a smart, pre-emptive move before Apple takes over that market as well — but as Sony is still composed of doofus executives, they will once again hand this market to Apple, by being inactive.

7 simple points, every single one of which SONY will fail to grasp, and which will pretty much doom the PSP (which *IS* a neat piece of technology) to irrelevance, at least when it comes to re-engineering themselves a serious technology and media player.

Oh well, there’s Sony for you!

Harry

.. and don’t forget, they’re buying into a whole other digital experience. ;o)

The great thing about Apple’s “THINK DIFFERENT” philosophy is that it allows for the competition to rise to the occassion and try to deliver. It also makes for great ‘product merging’. The PSP sounds good but as Mr. Zink pointed out .. not too savvy on a seamless and smooth experience. Who wants to view DVD’s on a 3″ x 5″ or whatever the screen specs are, anyway?

Until AI (artificial intelligence) becomes a common trend in our daily experience of interacting with life and one another I’ll stick to my Apple Coolness.

Great post and comments by the way!

Whether audiences of large enough mass will watch videos and ads on the devices, however, is far from clear.

Unilever, the first advertiser to take Heavy up on its offer, will test the potential with a series of branded shorts about two guys roaming the country and filming their efforts to meet women, all to promote Axe body spray. People can watch them at http://www.evanandgareth.com, on Heavy.com or on PSP’s after a download from Heavy.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/03/business/media/03adco.html?ex=1272772800&en=ec03500452ddd9f8&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

Sony Computer Entertainment will release a system software update for the PlayStation Portable (PSP) next week that will add several new functions to the handheld gaming device, including the ability to browse the Internet and download TV programs. The…

It’s been almost five months since I wrote the article ‘PSP: The New iPod’ so it was interesting when Sukumar pointed me to Russell Beattie’s post, ‘Web Tablet’s Are Coming’. In his post he points out how he now only uses his PSP 25% of the time for ga…