As an owner of ‘stuff’ and a general gadget fan, I’ve been following the ‘Tale of PSP’ with some interest and now a little confusion. My PSP – a big fat black one – does what I expected it to do when I bought it second hand. There are some issues which may at one point have prompted me to purchase a later model (output to TV for one) but I could never really justify the cost. So I have a collection of re-formatted DVDs which I have on various pieces of Sony proprietary format storage and that I use in cases of dire emergency on flights with nothing decent to watch.
But I’m still interested in new developments and since the original concept form, the next generation PSP has been of interest to me. At least it was until now. Today I decided that Sony have actually lost the plot and have, in what seems to be a creeping malignancy throughout that behemoth, placed the astheics of their product over its function.
My first , truly horrifying, experience of this effect was with one of the recent generations of Sony Walkman. At the time I was resisting the pull of the iPod, I owned and loved a Creative Xen HDD MP3 player at 30GB and carried it pretty much everywhere and I wanted to get a ‘nice’ MP3 player for my girlfriend. I shopped around and chose a Sony Walkman NW-A3000. It was beautiful. Silver and purple and a screen with buttons showing through an otherwise flawless exterior. It sat well in the hand, fitted snugly in the pocket or purse and was – I believed – a true consumer item.

Then the horrors started to emerge. I was used to plugging my Xen into my PC and clicking the sync button in Windows Media Player to update my pocket-o-tunes and was expecting the same for the new shininess. Not so, I was obliged to install and use one of the most hideous pieces of software it’s ever been my displeasure to use. Music from CDs was put into Sony’s “excellent” but almost totally unsupported ATRACK format and everything was just awful. The device itself worked well but that’s really only half of the usability.
Sony had put its muscle into the look and feel of the product and seemingly forgotten that people would actually want to use it in their own way.
The new PSPGo seems to have fallen victim to a similar affliction. It looks nice, it fits into a pocket, it has a slider form-factor (because everyone knows they’re cool!) but it seems that this product went from the minds of the designers straight to the production line without anyone asking the simple question – would I be happy paying £200 for this, given I probably already have a PSP or iPod Touch/iPhone or Zune HD or DS?

Or are the Big Black so wrapped up in their own brand that they truly believe we will buy it ‘because it’s Sony’?
Now look, I’m not just brand bashing here. I am one of those who associate a logo with quality and, as those close to me will attest, I’ll pretty much buy anything with a certain piece of fruit on the front of it! I also own and use a PSP, I’ve mentioned that I really like the PS3 now I’ve found a game I enjoy playing on it so this isn’t totally anti-Sony – some of their stuff is very, very good! It’s just that every now and again they do something stupid which costs them their premium position. It’s that precious brand alignment which Hoover achieved “I’m hovering the floor” not Bosching the floor or Dysoning the floor – Hoovering. People don’t get a walkman anymore they get an iPod, regardless of what the actual hardware is, Sony have lost this position through the assumption that it would last forever.
The PSP never reached this height of association but they’re certainly never going to if they believe that a next generation product is okay having the same technology inside as the previous and actually minus the cool stuff people want like touch-screen navigation.
The Walkman experience has put me off buying any product like it from Sony at any point ever, and I know I’m not alone in this. Is the PSPGo going to invoke the same reaction? We’ll no probably not, but I’m honestly struggling to find a reason to buy one in preference to the other devices out there with the same form factor because if all I want to do is play games on the go, I’ll take my DS.
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