The month: December
The year: 2004
The Sony Playstation Portable had just launched in Japan with a respectable amount of fanfare for a system that was entering a market that had been dominated … scratch that … MONOPOLIZED by Nintendo for well over 10 years in the US, and, while it wasn’t taking part in so much of a total monopoly in Japan, it might as well have been.
In 1994 a pie-chart of portable gaming’s market share in the United States (and most of Europe) would look like a solid round dot with the words “Game Boy” squarely in the middle. In Japan it would look something more like Pac-Man with a few toothpicks in his mouth … and the words “Wonderswan” or “GP32″ would have to be written on the outside of the pie-chart with little arrows pointing to the slivery sections detailing their single digit market shares.
So, needless to say, in 1994 Sony was making what some would consider to be a “risky move” striding into a market where Nintendo had not only stood un-challenged for years … but completely obliterated any challengers to their throne.
Former Sony Computer Entertainment President Ken Kutaragi … attempting to fly … at the PSP launch in Japan
Perhaps it was due to years of Nintendo loyalism (after all, some gamers had been literally BORN into Nintendo’s dominance in the handheld market and grown up not knowing the pleasures of the Atari LYNX or the Sega Game Gear), perhaps it was a Pavlovian response to a “challenger” in the marketplace that got some gamers in a twist …
… whatever it may have been, prior to and immediately following Sony’s portable system launch, the gaming public (and in a small part the critical press) decided to flood the information pipeline with as much negative information about the system as possible. Was this a genuine effort to damage the newly born reputation of the PSP, or just people with wild imaginations and too much time on their hands? Let’s take a look at the TOP FIVE PSP RUMORS THAT NEVER CAME TO PASS and decide for ourselves!
Rumor #5 : NOBODY WILL BUY MOVIES ON UMD!
While “movies on UMD” were admittedly a bit of a speculative gamble by Sony, and convincing major (and minor) studios to allow Sony to take on manufacturing duties for their movie back-catalogs on the completely un-tested UMD media format might not have been the easiest task, but when all was said and done, four years later, the UMD Video format turned out to NOT to be a total bust (or even a financial loss) for Sony. While in 2008 the widest manufacturing of studio back-catalogs has diminished, films are still being released on UMD by a few major studios, and some retail outlets like Wal Mart and Target continue to stock the UMD movie format based on continued consumer demand.
“You want to release Citizen Kane on a WHAT?”
Rumor #4 : EXTRA MULTIMEDIA FEATURES ARE WORTHLESS!
Game Boy always got by on it’s own merits. Despite any vocal interest from the gaming public, it never needed to play MP3s. Sure, some companies in Hong Kong and elsewhere may have released peripherals that allowed Game Boy and DS users to play MP3s, read E-Books, watch video files, listen to FM Radio, send E-Mails, and do a laundry list of other things (which oddly enough did NOT include actually doing laundry) … but that didn’t mean that Nintnendo actually had any interest in integrating those features into their hardware. Yes, the gaming public wanted it, and the gaming public was buying it, but Nintendo was clearly focused on quality hardware and software and believed that no amount of built-in extra features could possibly entice consumers to buy their systems (and honestly, it wasn’t like they needed to convince anybody that Game Boy was great enough to own).
Hmm … maybe it DID do laundry.
So, why on earth would people be interested in owning a portable GAMING device that could do things like play movies (both on a proprietary media, as well as off of a memory card), browse the internet, play MP3s, store and display photos, and many other things? (Sadly as of PSP Firmware 3.90, still no laundry.) Why? Hardcore portable gaming enthusiasts in 2003 would tell you that those things were not important to the gaming experience, but, what they forgot to tell you was that they were important … to the NON-GAMING experience, and that if you offer a device that does more than one thing, you’re appealing to more than one group of public interests. Were people buying portable MP3 players in 2003? Were people buying portable movie players in 2003? Of course they were. It may not have done as much in 2004 as it does now, but even at launch, PSP was a multimedia marvel as well as a powerful gaming device. Kind of a no brainer. (Of course, the REAL question is were people buying portable laundry machines in 2003? No? I smell an un-tapped market.)
Rumor #3 : LOW BATTERY LIFE!
While Nintendo had done an excellent job of creating portable gaming devices that absolutely lived forever on a minimal amount of batteries (and later on built-in rechargeables clocking in around between 10 and 20 hours between charges), Sony wound up with one of the most technological daunting hurdles that the game industry has ever faced. How to make a device with an active disc drive, an LCD screen, impressively loud stereo speakers, and a multi-stage backlight with a rechargeable battery situation that would both last more than 3 hours and not be as big as a laptop battery brick.
PSP owners at launch were pleased to find out that not only did Sony come through, but in comparison to previous handhelds in the same vein (Atari Lynx, Sega Nomad, Game Gear) they weren’t forced to deal with replacing 4 to 6 disposable batteries per play session … and those play sessions also didn’t show the effects of battery drainage mid game (fading sound or screen brightness were nowhere to be found on PSP).
Even in the case of the original PSP’s battery life (which has since increased from 4 to 6 hours on the original PSP to 8 to 10 hours on the ”Slim” PSP with the ”Stamina Battery” installed) Sony’s engineers included something that previous handheld systems seemingly ignored when taking battery life into consideration, a live pause-and-quick-save at the moment of full battery drainage! (The feature can also be activated at any time by putting the system quickly to sleep with a quick flick of the power off button) So, when you DO reach that last moment of a 4+ hour play session and your PSP gives you the final flash of the battery warning sign … the next time you charge up and power back on, you’ll be exactly where you left off.
Sure, a 1:1 comparison of battery life between the PSP and Game Boy or DS won’t win the PSP any contests, but it’s hardly a feature that is a fatal flaw for the device as a portable gaming system like it is in a Game Gear or a LYNX.
Yes, the re-chargeable battery had a belt clip … but where do I put it if I’m playing Game Gear on a nude beach?
Rumor #2 : NOTHING BUT PORTS!
PSP’s launch software lineup was in my personal opinion, one of the largest, most exciting system software launches in recent memory, consisting of well over 20 titles from almost every major studio, there was something for everybody : fighting, racing, sports, action, puzzle, adventure … and yes, more than a few of those titles were “ports” of both PS1 and PS2 titles (Ape Escape, Dark Stalkers, and others). That is not to say that the list was completely comprised of ports, and through the life of the system, software developed from the ground-up for the system has continued to grow exponentially. Yet, as strange as it may sound, there are still people, four years later that INSIST that the system has “nothing but ports”, and those people will go on to make the contrasting comparison to the DS, claiming that there are few or no ports to be found there (which is, of course as silly to say as it is to read.)
If one were to step back for a moment and examine the “port” situation on the PSP at face value, one would find one glaring, crucial reason why the PSP was such an attractive situation for “ports” of contemporary games. It was the first portable video game system on record that COULD handle current-gen (PS2 was current-gen at the time the PSP was designed/launched) game design, graphics and gameplay. If you wanted a version of Super Mario on the Game Boy Advance at the time that Super Mario Sunshine was making waves on the Gamecube, you’d have to settle for a traditional NES/SNES style Super Mario outing, no full 3D environments, no polygons, no analog movement. Sorry!
Nintendo, over the course of 15 years had created a hardware model of current-gen-portable game system = previous-generation-home game console, and the gaming public had not only accepted it, but had come to embrace it. This was not to say that there weren’t “ports” on Nintendo’s Game Boy systems, but if you were looking to play Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater on the Gameboy Advance, you’d have to settle for an isometric 3/4 view “interpretation” of the skaters, moves, and levels from the 32/64/128-bit versions of the franchise that were available on consoles.
The PSP shattered those boundaries, and raised the previously existing glass-ceiling of how close a portable game could function to it’s console counterpart. This not only allowed companies to make pixel-perfect ports on the system, but also encouraged it.
Of course, at the crux of this rumor is that “porting” was the only thing going on with PSP developers. And while it still happens more often than not, there are plenty of great original properties that have debuted on the PSP, as well as been so popular that they’ve moved on to later become multi-platform franchises.
It was so popular as ONE complete PSP game that XBOX LIVE got a version where you have to pay for it in THREE separate parts.
Rumor #1 : UMD DISCS EJECT (and fly across the room) DURING GAME-PLAY!
Oh, if I could borrow Doc Brown’s time-traveling Delorean and time-travel back to September 2004, the ONE thing that I would do to save myself literally months of message board debating on the subject, would be to find the JACKASS who took a Japanese launch PSP and made a video of himself holding the system while the UMD drive-door pops open and the inserted disc pops out onto the floor – and, before he purchases his PSP, break both of his arms so severely that he’d have to wear one of those full-upper-body-casts with the support bars that hold both arms in the upright position.
The negative spin on the internet that that video created just a few months before the US system launch was absolutely un-believable. You could Google the past 20 years of negative press stemming from Atari burying all their extra copies of E.T. in the Nevada desert, front-loading NES systems flashing on and off when you insert a cartridge, and Playstations not reading discs unless you turn them upside-down, and you wouldn’t find as many message board posts, avatars, signatures, YTMND sites, and YouTube music videos dedicated to that single moment in PSP history.
What was later uncovered, yet as ignored by most in the anti-Sony camp as the evidence in The Zapruder Files to the presence of multiple shooters – was the fact that what the gamer responsible for this COMPLETELY BOGUS PROOF-OF-MANUFACTURING-FLAW had done was a two-part scam-job
First, he held the PSP downward in a way that would allow for gravity to complete the job of sending the UMD disc “flying” (toward the floor in this case.)
Second, with his grip squarely on both sides of the unit he REPEATEDLY TWISTED the unit torquing forward with his left hand and backwards with his right. In repeated attempts to re-create this event, this was the ONLY way that The Mythbusters were able to make it happen on their PSP’s.
After a worldwide launch, and since that video found it’s way onto the net, I believe that it’s safe to say that there has never been a reported case of “Spontaneously Ejecting UMD Syndrome” (SEUS for short) in PSPs in the wild.
Yeah, this is the one that caused months of frustration and completely. fucking. false. fears in potential PSP users! I’d still like to break both of those arms.
Well kids, that’s all for my inaugural feature!
Thanks so much for stopping by, reading, caring and most importantly – sharing!
-T.O.C.D.G.
Posted by The O.C.D. Gamer 
Posted by The O.C.D. Gamer 