GameStop lists recently revamped versions of Taito arcade classics, with Square Enix set to publish.

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Kratos is back and angrier than ever in this PSP prequel to the popular action adventure series. Watch our launch center for the latest news, previews, and our review.

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New PSP Slim Overview

Not too long ago Sony made a few changes to its PSP portable gaming system. Today we are going to look at the new slim PSP and compare it to the old PSP to see just what is different about the two systems. If you are thinking about getting a new PSP slim, read on for details on the new slim PSP and some comparisons to the old PSP.

Features & Specifications

The new PSP has the same basic specifications as the old PSP. Games and movies are still stored on UMD discs. You can even pop your Memory Stick out of your old PSP if you are upgrading and play from your previous saved games without any issues. Size wise the new PSP is a bit slimmer and by a bit, I mean a tiny bit.

• The new PSP slim is 0.7-inch thick whereas the old PSP was 0.9-inch thick.
• The weight of the new system is 6.7 ounces as compared to the weight of the old system at 9.2 ounces.
• Sony doubled the amount of onboard memory with the slim PSP from the original 32MB to 54MB in the slim PSP.
• The screen is the same on both machines and the WiFi adapter is the same as well.
• The slim PSP gains the ability to use a component out cable to play games on a larger screen.
• Gaming wise the two systems are identical.

Other than the slight reduction in thickness, the bulk of the weight savings comes thanks to the smaller, thinner battery pack.

The new PSP uses a 1200mAh battery while the old PSP used an 1800mAh battery. While the battery is smaller, the new PSP uses less power so game play time is rated the same by Sony at 3-6 hours.

Gaming

On the game titles I played, I noticed a slight improvement in load times for games and levels, but nothing to write home about.

External changes to the new PSP include the loss of the UMD eject button. You now simply pry the UMD bay door open with your fingernail. The WiFi button now sites where the eject button is on the old PSP.The body color is still black, though you can get special edition PSP bundles that come in different colors.

The old PSP was glossy black on the front and a matte black on the back, which I liked. The new PSP has the glossy black on both the front and back. Not only does this attract more fingerprints and scuffs than the matte finish, the glossy new PSP offers less grip when playing with sweaty palms.

The reminder of the PSP features from the original PSP carry over. One new addition is the ability to charge via USB with eh new PSP, but it takes around 5 hours so most of us will stick to the AC adapter. In the end, if you still have a functional PSP you really don’t need the new slim PSP.

In real world gameplay, I hardly noticed the weight difference and the improvement in load time of games like Burnout, Test Drive Unlimited and Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories was minimal.

If you simply must play your PSP games on a bigger screen, it’s a worthwhile update and if you are new to the PSP looking to get your first device, it is a no brainer.

Sony has often won big by thinking small. Portable gizmos such as the Walkman, the Discman and the Handicam helped make this company the consumer electronics power it is today. But until now, it hasn’t tried to run that play with its most successful product of the past decade, the PlayStation line of video-game machines.

That changes Thursday, when Sony introduces the PlayStation Portable — PSP for short. This $250 device is Sony’s answer to Nintendo’s Game Boy and DS handhelds. It also represents yet another try by Sony to get into the portable-media market Apple’s iPod owns.

Rob Pegoraro says the $250 Sony PlayStation Portable is a ‘peerless’ gaming machine, ‘combining sharp graphics, deep game play and easy online connectivity.’ (Julia Ewan - The Washington Post)

The PSP does only one of those jobs well, and you can probably guess which one. As a portable game machine, it’s a peerless piece of work, combining sharp graphics, deep game play and easy online connectivity. As a multimedia gadget, however, it’s a dud.

The PSP’s sleek appearance backs up its gaming orientation. This booklet-sized device — 6 5/8 inches by 2 7/8 inches by 15/16 inches, weighing 11 ounces with headphones and remote control — carries a similar layout of buttons to that of a PlayStation 2 controller, plus a sharp, wide-format color display. At about 4 1/4 inches wide, with a 480-by-272 resolution, it’s larger than other game players’ displays and almost as sharp as those on handheld organizers.

The sum of these parts looks just different enough from other portable widgets — and cool enough in its own right — to draw reactions from passerby that range from intrigued to awestruck.

The PSP’s breakthrough feature, however, can’t be seen from outside. Its WiFi receiver allows PSPs to link up for peer-to-peer wireless gaming or, if within range of a separate WiFi access point, competition across the Internet. That second option is absent from the PSP’s chief competitor, Nintendo’s $150 DS. (Web access would have been a pleasant bonus but there is no browser available on the PSP.)

Setting up a PSP for Internet game play is harder than necessary, thanks to Sony’s awkward interface for entering the lengthy alphanumeric encryption key most WiFi access points require.

Otherwise, though, multiplayer mayhem on the PSP is laughably simple. Select “multiplayer” from a game’s menu, choose between local or Internet-wide contests (in a fit of jargon, the PSP calls them “ad hoc” and “infrastructure”), then wait for opponents to show up.

In The Post’s newsroom, two PSPs joined the same game in seconds and maintained the connection up to about 110 feet away. Two Internet-hosted games were almost as quick to set up and showed no signs of lag, the slow response time that can gum up online games.

You can also play PSP titles solo, of course, but it’s just more fun to compete against other people. You don’t get the same sublime sense of satisfaction when the car you incinerate with a hail of missiles is driven by the computer instead of your co-worker.

Gaming novices may find the PSP’s multiple controls a lot to handle. It offers two four-way arrays of buttons to operate with your left and right thumbs, left and right switches to work with your index fingers and an “analog stick” that also falls under your left thumb — and which can cramp up your hand.

Instead of CDs or DVDs, the PSP uses a new, smaller format that Sony has optimistically christened the Universal Media Disc (UMD). These 2 1/2-inch-wide discs store 1.8 gigabytes of data, far more than the flash-memory cards used in other handhelds. (One unpleasant side effect: lengthy waits for games to load, up to a minute in my tests.)

Rob Pegoraro says the $250 Sony PlayStation Portable is a ‘peerless’ gaming machine, ‘combining sharp graphics, deep game play and easy online connectivity.’ (Julia Ewan - The Washington Post)

That kind of storage allows PSP titles to offer much of the depth and detail of games made for the PS2, Nintendo’s GameCube and Microsoft’s Xbox. PSP sports simulations, for instance, let you build teams by drafting and trading players, instead of just playing games with a fixed roster.

Sony says 24 games will be available initially, at $40 or $50 each. (See the related story below for an evaluation of this batch of titles.)

A rechargeable, replaceable battery powers the PSP; it ran for about 4 1/2 hours with WiFi on.

If Sony had quit there, it would have had an unambiguous winner. But it fell flat in trying to turn the PSP into a media machine that plays and displays movies, music and photos.

In this role, the PSP is the prisoner of its own formats. Movies must be bought or rented on UMDs, which can neither be played or viewed on any other devices. Only 22 titles have been announced so far; even discounted off their $20 list prices, these constitute a lousy deal.

Because those same UMDs aren’t rewriteable, your own music and photos can be stored only on a Memory Stick Duo card inserted in a slot on the PSP’s side. This cut-down version of Sony’s proprietary, expensive Memory Stick format can’t be used in a regular Memory Stick slot without an adapter, but Sony doesn’t include one. Nor does it include the USB cable you’ll otherwise need to connect a PSP to a PC. (At least the PSP’s standard-size USB jack accepted the cable from my handheld organizer.)

Once you’ve obtained an adapter or USB cable, copying music and photos requires creating a particular hierarchy of folders on a Memory Stick Duo, without which the PSP can’t find your files. If you, unlike most, have downloaded songs from the Sony Connect online store, you’ll need to use Sony’s SonicStage program to transfer those files.

If you get a PSP, do yourself a favor and stick to the games. If you also want to listen to music and view your pictures, just get an iPod Photo or another music-plus-photos player. What if you don’t want to carry around two expensive gadgets all the time? Then you’ve got a problem — and so does Sony, until it revisits the PSP’s multimedia software.

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