Man, I've been super-psyched for the Sony PSP. Some of the reasons I've been looking forward to it are obvious reasons that everyone else is thinking. Its graphical prowess is considerable and blows the competition's visuals out of the water. The multimedia capabilities -- movies and music -- of the PSP appeal to my tech-centric lifestyle. The WiFi features allow for both local and long-distance multiplayer gameplay. The system's industrial design is the sultriest thing I've ever seen in gaming. (I'd say sexiest, but sexy has been the most overused word describing the system.) It's simply an amazing system that will raise the bar for handheld gaming.

On the less obvious side, I'm extremely interested to see how the PSP will impact the perception of handheld gaming. Nintendo has dominated the scene with its Game Boy products. While the line was clearly a mass-market success, its audience was largely younger and longtime gamers. Nokia and Tapwave have tried to reach an older crowd with its N-Gage and Zodiac systems, but neither company has achieved significant success. Sony has a chance to change handheld gaming the same way it changed console gaming -- by making it cool and hip, and making handhelds appeal to a larger and older audience. The company's ability to market electronics is (arguably) second only to Apple's. If there's a company that can make the gaming equivalent to the iPod, it's Sony.


I've finally had a chance to play with a North American production PSP unit. It's everything I imagined it to be. The games look fantastic. It's really easy to configure the system to home networks (offices are another story). And the movies look way better than I thought they would. It's almost the perfect handheld system. For now I'll just keep thinking about the PSP of my dreams -- one with twice the battery life, a highly smudge-resistant surface, and a pink casing.