We've had the new Sony PSP in the GameSpot offices for almost a week now and we're ready to offer some extended hands-on impressions of what it's like using Sony's newest portable.
You might be tired of reading about how great the PSP looks, but we can't help but reiterate that that Sony PSP is a polished piece of hardware. Even with the unit turned off, the slick design and excellent material selection make for a very good first impression. The PSP does weigh slightly more than the Nintendo DS, but the weight is well balanced and it's packed into such a small space that the density gives the system a really solid feel. Holding such a dense piece of equipment hints at the serious hardware packed inside.
The front of the unit consists of what appears to be an acrylic resin. It gives the face a glossy sheen, and the plastic front extends over the LCD screen to protect the actual display from dust and fingerprints. However, the shiny plastic face itself is a fingerprint magnet, so keep those soft fiber hankies close at hand.
The D pad features the sunk-in design similar to the one found on the usual Sony Dual Shock controller, and the right side of the unit has the usual triangle, square, circle, and x buttons. All of the D pad controls and primary buttons, including the L and R shoulder buttons, are made of a hard, transparent plastic for that extra touch of style. The PSP also has a short, analog control disc located beneath the D pad, which doesn't extend out as far as a normal analog stick, but it still provides for full range of motion, like a greatly improved NES Max navigation pad.
You have to see the Sony PSP's LCD display in person to appreciate how impressive it actually is. It would not be inappropriate to use an adjective like "jaw-dropping" to describe the image quality. The 4.3-inch 16:9 widescreen display has a 480x272 resolution, which outputs an extremely sharp picture considering that all those pixels fit into a small display area. The screen is bright and has a surprisingly wide viewing angle that'll allow you to show off the PSP to people sitting to your left and right if you're on a plane. However, the pixel-response time does seem slow since we did notice some ghosting while watching the various movie trailers and music videos on the UMD demo disc.
Some people have reported problems with dead pixels. We can't speak on how widespread the problem is, but, we have seen one dead pixel out of the batch of PSPs that we've seen. As for reports about the UMD slot popping open at inopportune times,
we did notice that we could set off the lid's spring-loaded eject by applying a little pressure to the top right of the unit while holding the left side in place. The miniscule flex was enough to trigger the eject mechanism, so we imagine this might be an issue Sony will address in future design revisions.
While the PSP's screen gets all the attention, we also have to say that the system's sound quality deserves plenty of praise too. The PSP shatters the perception that portable game consoles can't have great sound. The extra large 1.8GB UMD media allows for CD-quality sound, and Sony takes full advantage of it in all of its media and game applications. The extra large media support allows a simple puzzle game like Lumines to achieve a cohesive look and feel by combining stylistic visuals with a unique, high- quality soundtrack. The PSP unit itself features stereo speakers, and a built-in headphone jack for private listening.
Battery life ranges anywhere from one and a half hours to eight hours depending on the application used. A puzzle game like Lumines, with its minimal UMD accesses, can last for over six hours, but Ridge Racers may only last for two or three hours since it needs to access the UMD each time you enter or leave a race. The PSP battery is removable, so you can keep a fully charged battery in reserve and swap it in as needed. Recharging the battery back to full strength only takes an hour and a half to two hours. Using the wireless capabilities will reduce battery life even more.
Wireless gameplay is currently limited to players in close proximity to each other, but Sony has indicated that users will be able to play against each other over the Internet in the future. We were able to get a three-way Ridge Racers game going without a problem, and we got about ninety feet away from each other before dropping out of range.
Sony hasn't announced the PSP launch date for North America yet, but we expect an announcement early next year, possibly during next month's 2005 Consumer Electronics Show. The Sony PSP does have a region-lock mechanism, but Sony has decided to disable the region lock for games. Other types of media, such as movies, will still be region-locked. Anyone importing a PSP system from Japan should be able to play games released in different territories, but Sony has warned that, although it won't be actively barring cross-region game support, it won't be testing games for cross-region compatibility.
By James Yu
Posted Friday, December 17th 2004
Quelle: GameSpot
