I have had a PSP3000 since it came out and it has seen a fair amount of use, although not nearly enough at it should have received.
So over the time that I have had it I have often thought about what would make it a better system and almost every time I arrive at the brick wall that is Sony's over-protectiveness of its proprietary software.
The thing is pretty amazing, a nice big screen, ultra portable, and specs that would easily run many other applications.
At the moment I have used it to play music, watch videos, play games, browse the web, make and receive calls on skype, view pictures and perhaps the most interesting feature I have used is 'Remote Play' which connects to a PS3 from virtually any internet hotspot in the world and streams the PS3's video output right to the PSP.
May not sound that impressive especially since most games wont work on it but if you were sharing videos, pictures and music on other computers at home you would instantly have access to everyones media anywhere in the world, streamed right to your PSP.
Ok now we have that out of the way its time to start with the complaining.
Why Sony hasn't released some sort of API so developers can write apps for the PSP is beyond me, everyone is doing it, seriously, everyone. Google has Android Market, Apple has its App Store, Intel is planning an app store for Atom compatible programs, Steam has had a store of sorts for digitally distributing games, so has EA, Nokia is planning one... everyone.
Sony already has the PSN, a well established distribution platform for themes, videos, even full games; the PSP must be capable of running apps, it can run skype which is about as third party as it gets.
Ok there, wasn't too much complaining after all, now, to the point
The easiest store to compare with is one intended for a mobile phone, and since the PSP doesn't have cellular connectivity and GPS many apps wouldn't be applicable. An E-Book reader or at least an app to open pdf or even plain text files would see some use however one thing that I think would really take off is the introduction of widgets that might just have a dedicated category on the XMB.
Imagine just tapping over to the widgets menu and having weather, new mail, replace the existing search with a widget, maybe stocks, news, twitter, music player etc. Obviously they would only be able to update in range of wifi but it would open the PSP up to a lot more possibilities.
Ok so that is what should happen, now lets see if the PSP is heading in this direction.
With the release of the PSP go imminent Sony really is moving to full digital distribution and I have seen the PSN undergo rapid changes to accommodate the increase in attention that it is getting, both from users and distributors.
Apparently from October 1st all new PSP releases will be available on UMD for older models and as a download on the PSN for the PSP go. It will be interesting to see if these downloads will be compatible with older models too.
I'll be waiting to see what Sony fix us up with in the way of firmware after the Oct1 release date.