1. The system has a standby feature. Use it.
There’s nothing more irritating on the go than having to wait for your portable device to load up, especially when it auto loads your copy of Syphon Filter when you just wanted to listen to some music. Standby doesn’t use battery like you might think. originally I opted to turn it off when I wasn’t using it to save battery power, but what I found is that I was less likely to use it because I knew I had to wait for it to turn on and I had to eject the disc to get to the other features, and all that was too much of a hassle.
2. Read game reviews. Lots of them.
A lot of people seem to be under the impression that there isn’t anything worth playing for the psp. This is, of course, a personal opinion, but I have to wonder if these people purposely avoid any sort of videogame media just to reinforce this opinion. There have been many critically acclaimed games released for the psp, and if you kept up on reviews you would know this. I see so many people who have no idea what game to buy for their psp, and it’s a little ridiculous. It’s best to read multiple sites before buying, just to get a well rounded impression. Gamerankings.com is good for at a glance, but most reviews have more detailed information which might be more useful than a raw score. An added benefit of all this is that you won’t unknowingly find yourself with a bad game because you chose to ignore reviews. oh, and a little hint, reader reviews that come immediately or shortly after the release of a game are usually written by fan boys or people who didn’t play the game. Take note of it.
3. Firmware is very incremental, and Sony releases those for their own benefit, not yours.
There are many good things that have come from the updates (web browsing, added compatibility, wallpaper,) but the only reason they’re giving you those things is to get people to buy the system, and in turn buy the games, and make them money. This should be obvious to most people, but it seems like every update someone comes along and complains about how little it adds and how it’s not what they wanted. Well guess what, Sony isn’t going to add illegal emulator support no matter how bad you want it, that wouldn’t profit them. They lose money on the systems, and if you don’t need to pay to play the games they’re not going to get that money back. If you want to see more good games and better support, buy all the good games that are out now and show Sony and other developers that this system is worth backing full force, you can always play snes games on your pc and your ds lite. The psone emulator, the gps device, the camera, the connect service; all of this seemingly cool and useful stuff is only being released so Sony can charge you for it. That’s how capitalism works.
4. They’re not going to make a hard drive, or re-release the psp with a hard drive. Buy a memory stick.
Yes, we know the ipod has a 30 GB hdd now. You don’t have to remind us. Just face it, the psp doesn’t have an hdd, its never going to have an hdd, and you need to get yourself a memory stick. consider this though, the flash memory the psp's memory sticks use don’t have any moving parts, unlike an hdd, so they’re more sturdy, and they’re relatively tiny and lightweight. The psp is more like the ipod nano, which also uses flash memory, than the regular ipod, and for a nano you pay $150 for 1GB. Sound familiar? On the plus side, prices for memory sticks are dropping. The 1GB stick that launched for $150 is easily found for less than a third of that, and even 2GB sticks, which weren’t released until much later, are under $100. 4GB and 8GB will be affordable soon enough, just give it some time, and really, you probably don’t need all that space just yet anyways.
5. Who cares if umd movies fail? You didn’t buy them.
We've all heard about umd video going the way of betamax, (despite the fact that I still see tons of them in Wal-Mart’s, Target’s, and Gamestop’s,) but why are we worried about it? Umd movies were a blunder by seemingly everyone involved. Sony thought they could release a movie format that only played on one piece of hardware that was more expensive than a DVD player and had a 5" screen. Film studios thought they could sell you more copies of movies you already own on DVD with less features for the same price, if not more. In the end, you’re paying more and getting less. The fact that umd movies are dying shows that they didn’t win and consumers are still too smart for that kind of crap. Give yourself a round of applause.
6. Portable versions of multiconsole games aren’t usually the better version. Decide which version is right for you.
If you are one of the smart ones who read reviews, no doubt, you’ve seen that psp and ds versions of games released for everything usually score a little lower. This is usually because they’re smaller, they don’t look as good, and/or they’ve just been completely retooled and aren’t the same game. You don’t buy a portable game to have the biggest and best looking version of it though; you buy it to have a version of the game that you can take with you wherever you go. If you were looking for biggest and best looking, buy it for your home console or pc, undoubtedly you'll be more satisfied. In the end, these types of games are rarely suited for portable play anyways, and you should stick to games designed with your portable in mind for the best experience.
7. PSP is going to make you work a little to get the most out of it. This isn’t a gameboy.
Sony did pretty well with the cross media bar, but not everything about the system is as easy or intuitive. Some things are definitely in need of some improvement. The mpeg filing system is damn near unintelligible. What I’m trying to say here is that that you’re going to have to spend time reading and learning with your psp if you want to really use it as an all in one. You could easily just pop a umd in it and ignore everything else, but that would just be silly, now wouldn’t it. A lot of people have put a lot of work into explaining every little facet of the psp and putting it on the internet for free, all you have to do is look for it. Just don’t use the psp browser to look.
Seven will do. See you next time, folks.