Thanks to American relatives visiting, I had the oppurtunity to try out the new Sony PSP. It is very impressive. I even did the Wipeout browser hack so I could browse the net via my 802.11g wireless network.
The screen is extremely impressive, the quality of the graphics is quite literally shocking to someone like me who remembers the days of the original Gameboy, the Sega Megadrive, and even the Atari 2600. Packing so much graphical power into such a device is astonishing. All the bells and whistles make it a very attractive product, not sure I will ever buy one, but I think they will be the birthday and Christmas present once they are released here. Forget the Nintendo DS, Sony will take this market.
I managed to get my hands on a prototype of the PSP from an early devkit, and believe it or not, the screen on that was even *better* than the one on the final production unit. The current screen leaves horrible trails when certain colour combinations are on screen.
Thankfully, these trails only happen with horrible colour combinations (say.. yellow on a purple background), so perhaps it’s a feature to prevent garish design.
I should have had a go of one at this stage. My brother had a friend going to the US who was to buy him one, but they couldn’t manage to find a store selling them, so that was the end of that.
It should be a big seller!