Sony's new PlayStation Portable is a pretty toy with many features a cool way to take your entertainment with you.

But it's not "a 21st Century Walkman," an iPod killer or a must- have gadget for children who love Nintendo's Game Boy Advance.

It's way too expensive at $250.

Dedicated MP3 players do a much better job of handling digital music.

And the PSP looks and feels too fragile to risk putting in the hands of a 10-year-old.

Still, it's a fun, diverting gadget, especially for responsible teenagers and adults who grew up playing portable games.

And it offers a lot more, including the ability to play digital movies and music, act as a digital photo album and connect to the Internet through a built-in Wi-Fi connection.

Sales solid, not spectacular

By now, it is likely you've seen the funky TV commercials featuring hip twentysomethings jumping around and dancing with PSPs.

But despite the heavy marketing, PSP sales figures released last week suggest that although the device sold well, it did not sell out. More than 500,000 systems were sold in the first two days it went on sale late last month, according to Sony.

In a carefully worded statement, the company says PSP sales made more than $150 million in the early days of its launch in the North American market, "during a traditionally slower non-holiday season launch, and during a period when many retailers were closed for Easter."

Analysts have described early PSP sales as solid but not spectacular, and units were available at some area Target and Best Buy stores last week.

Monica Wik, a Sony spokeswoman, said the company is focusing on the PSP's success over the long term.

"The PlayStation 2 in North America alone has sold just over 32 million units, and we believe the PSP having digital music, movies and photos has the potential to greatly surpass the potential of PS2. The sky is the limit."

A convergence device'

The PlayStation Portable is what technology professionals like to call a "convergence device," bundling digital media and games. Wik said the PSP "is not an attempt to steal market share from Nintendo or quite frankly even the iPod. We are looking at this as creating a new market."

That audience, Wik said, is made up of adults ages 18 to 34 who have some money in their pockets and aren't afraid to spend it.

"This is not a kiddie toy," she said. "It is something that an older demographic would be quite proud to take out on an airplane to watch a movie. It is not a toy, and it is not purely a gaming device."

Still, Sony executives have said repeatedly that the PlayStation franchise is first and foremost about games. And despite a dubious group of games available when the PSP went on sale, that is where this gadget will ultimately shine the brightest.

Games and digital media sparkle on the PSP's dazzling 4.3-inch, high-resolution color screen, which comes in a 16:9 aspect ratio, meaning it looks like a movie screen. The industrial design behind the PSP is brilliant an LCD screen and the device's glossy black plastic shell give it a lot of flash and style.

The $250 PSP "value pack" includes the device, stereo headphones, a 32-megabyte Memory Stick Duo, battery and charger. It also comes with two of Sony's proprietary 1.8-gigabyte Universal Media Discs one offering samples of music, movies and games, and the other with the movie "Spider-Man 2."

These thin media discs are about the diameter of a small Starbucks coffee cup lid, and they are the format that publishers and studios use to get games and movies on the system. They load into a pop-up, spring-loaded drive system in the back, and when you boot one up you can sometimes hear the drive spinning.

New possibilities

About 25 games costing $40 to $50 each are available. There isn't much originality in the current pack of titles. In fact, experienced players will likely find most of them uninspired. There are several racing games and sports titles which are typical fare when a system first hits the market that are similar to their cousins on the PlayStation 2. There are also a few action and puzzle games sprinkled in for flavor.

The twist is that instead of being tethered to a TV, you can pull out your PSP while waiting for an appointment, sitting at a bus stop or standing in a long line.

Despite the "been there, done that" feel of most of the current PSP games, designers are excited about the possibilities the new platform offers.

"It's always nice to develop for a new platform, especially when it's early in the lifecycle," said Rob Hill, the producer of the game "Untold Legends" for the PSP. "It allows you to experiment, and I see a lot of developers excited about that, including us."

Hill's game, which is from Sony Online Entertainment, is a traditional fantasy role-playing game where players explore different environments, fight monsters and collect treasure.

Hill said the PSP's impressive processing power let his team add more animations and special effects, as well as create larger environments than they had initially planned.

"The capabilities of the PSP are outstanding," he said. "You can do true 3D, which you can't do on other platforms. This was originally designed to be a primary 3D device, and being able to do that opens a lot of opportunities for how you can represent the game. You can add a lot of flash and wow factor."

A simple connection

The buttons and controller layout on the PSP will be familiar to anyone who has played a PlayStation. Music and picture viewing options are navigated through simple menus.

Sony doesn't supply the USB cable needed to transfer photos and music from a computer, and it doesn't come with any software to synchronize files.

Connecting to Wi-Fi wireless networks and other PSPs is simple as long as you remember to flip the switch that activates the feature. Sony smartly lets you turn off the Wi-Fi option to save battery power.

You also can play with as many as 15 other nearby PSPs through its ad hoc wireless mode in which one player acts as a host for the rest.

Sony didn't include a built-in Web browser for the PSP, but fans soon figured out ways to bring up their favorite sites on the PSP and posted directions on how to do it at fan pages such as Psp411.com.

The replaceable lithium-ion battery takes more than two hours to charge. Sony says the battery will last between three and six hours, depending on whether you're playing games and watching movies or just listening to music.

Movies being released on Universal Media Discs will cost about as much as movies on DVD, but don't expect a PSP movie shelf at the local Hollywood Video anytime soon.

Some movies being released

Sony Pictures Home Entertainment is releasing PSP versions of action movies such as "XXX," "Hellboy," "Resident Evil 2" and "Once Upon a Time in Mexico" next Tuesday.

Lions Gate Entertainment announced last month it will release some movies on UMD, including "Rambo: First Blood," "Stargate" and "Total Recall." Buena Vista Home Entertainment has announced a handful of movies for the PSP. "National Treasure," "Reign of Fire" and "Kill Bill: Volume One" are among them.

Wik, the Sony spokeswoman, said PSP fans and potential buyers will have to wait until the Electronic Entertainment Expo in May to learn how many PSP games and movies will be available for the holiday shopping season.

"We are in discussions with all of the major movie studios," she said. "It's up to them to decide when they want to make announcements."

Sony's choice of proprietary storage media technologies the Universal Media Disc for movies and games and the Memory Stick Duo for music, MPEG-4 video and still pictures is going to be a significant hurdle for the PSP to appeal to mainstream buyers.

Sony doesn't sell blank UMDs or a UMD writer, and large capacity Memory Stick Duo cards are expensive. For example, a 1-gigabyte, Sony-brand Memory Stick Duo card costs $200, and the same sized card from SanDisk is only $50 less.

DFC Intelligence, a market research firm, expects the PSP and Nintendo's dual-screen DS to drive the global portable games market from $3.9 billion in 2003 to $11.1 billion in 2007. The overall video game industry worldwide saw sales of about $23 billion in 2003.

WATCH THE ACTION

A video clip commentary and demonstration showing Sony's PlayStation Portable in action is at www.jsonline.com/links/psp.

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Stanley A. Miller II covers personal technology for the Journal Sentinel. He can be reached at (414) 223-512 or smiller@journalsentinel.com.

Copyright 2005, Journal Sentinel Inc. All rights reserved. (Note: This notice does not apply to those news items already copyrighted and received through wire services or other media.)

Copyright 2005 Journal Sentinel Inc. Note: This notice does not apply to those news items already copyrighted and received through wire services or other media
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