Sony’s failed experiment to ride off into the sunset?

Poor PSP Go, it tried so hard to be loved. But now we’re getting the reports that we’ve known were coming for a long time: Sony is finally pulling the plug, officially halting the sale and production of the less than two year old device permanently.

It’s a sad end to what could have been a significant landmark on the chronology of gaming. It offered us freedom from the inconvenience of disks, (legal) instantaneous acquisition of games and a way for developers not to get screwed over by the second hand market or piracy. We all know in our hearts that’s where gaming is going to end up sooner or later, with fully digital consoles and an end to the traditional brick and mortar stores for good. But some unlucky sod had to be the first one to test those waters and find out if the world was truly ready for the digital gaming revolution, but unfortunately for Sony those waters turned out to be somewhat stagnant. Despite a lot of positive reaction to the new smartphone like “sliding“ design and improved features such as bluetooth support, PSP Go sold EXCEPTIONALLY poorly.

It’s not too surprising really, even with its technical innovations there were more than enough factors ensure it would fail: an overly ambitious price, an advertising campaign so awful it could have only come from Sony, a still lingering sentimental attachment to physical storage devices, publishers enforcing ridiculously inflated prices for PSP games on the PSN (often 50% higher than the retail value!), no way for longtime PSP fans to transfer UMD collections into digital downloads, traditional stores realising that the device’s success was not in their best interest, the list goes on.

Wisely Sony have chosen to take a big step back on the digital console front, but not withdraw from the idea completely just yet. The PSP’s successor codenamed NGP (Am I the only one who wants it to keep that name?) will reportedly be a hybrid device that equally focus on both physical storage and digital downloads, with Sony encouraging publishers to opt for the latter format for smaller titles. But the digital only focus isn’t the only thing that won’t be carried over to the NGP; although a lot of NGP dev kits do retain the Go’s “sliding” design, for mass production it was apparently abandoned in favor of the traditional PSP shape due to issues with early NGP prototypes overheating.

At least the PSP Go lives on in the form of Sony Ericsson’s functionally similar Xperia Play (AKA the “PlayStation Phone”), which judging by current public opinion and the crazy price tag that’s been slapped onto it (£479.99), It looks like it will be just as popular as it’s forefather.