Portable Gaming: Yes Please!

Portable Gaming has been a hobby of mine since I was a kid in the 80's.  Through a trade, I acquired a battery operated Galaga hand-held.  It was a miniature replica of an arcade machine with two joysticks and it would let two players play - one at a time or head to head.  We had a few other handheld games but until we got the Gameboy in '91, they were mostly the little disposable games.

Over the next few years, again, through trades with friends I acquired two more gameboys, many games, and was proud to see by college, I had amassed several dozen games.  My brother still has one of these and many of the games.

There were a few other systems that were impressive, but failed to take off or gain popularity like the Gameboy.  I had, at one time, almost picked up a Sega Game Gear.  But with subsequent systems, I did buy the Gameboy Color and Gameboy Advanced.  Am even proud to say I picked up the Famicon Anniversary Edition GBA SP - and still own both the GBA and SP.

I picked up a PSP 2000 Series in 2008.  And it was an impressive system.  Gaming was top notch as was its MP3 and video playback capabilities.  The only problem I really had with the PSP was (1) the glossy, surface (2) the crummy wifi, and (3) the storage updates were very slow to being updated - there is really no reason for Sony to not implement firmware updates to give users the maximum storage options for the Memory Stick media - at the time I was limited to 8GB while the maximum size of the media format was 32GB.

I also really did not care for the fact that the UMD never really took off as a media format.  Not that it was ultimately needed, but as one of the selling points of the system, Sony failed to push the format.  I really wanted to get on board with this format.  Although, now its become somewhat of a moot point.

Most bluerays now come with the digital copy option which will allow you to watch on a portable device.  Amazon, my preferred movie site also gives you this option.  You simply have to have adequate storage for the files.



So now along comes the Vita and I wonder if this is just going to be another dud.

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PSP Vita Specs:

CPU:  ARM^® Cortex™- A9 core (4 core)

GPU:  SGX543MP4+

External Dimensions:  Approx. 182.0 x 18.6 x 83.5mm (width x height x depth)
(tentative, excludes largest projection)

Screen (Touch Screen):  5 inches (16:9), 960 x 544, Approx. 16 million colors, OLED
Multi touch screen (capacitive type)

Rear Touch Pad:  Multi touch pad (capacitive type)

Cameras:  Front camera, Rear camera

Sound:  Built-in stereo speakers, Built-in microphone

Sensors:  Six-axis motion sensing system (three-axis gyroscope,
three-axis accelerometer), Three-axis electronic compass

Location: Built-in GPS, Wi-Fi location service support

Keys / Switches:  PS button, Power button, Directional buttons (Up/Down/Right/Left), Action buttons (Triangle, Circle, Cross, Square), Shoulder buttons (Right/Left), Right stick, Left stick, START button, SELECT button, Volume buttons (+/-)

Wireless Communications:  Mobile network connectivity (3G), IEEE 802.11b/g/n (n = 1x1)(Wi-Fi)(Infrastructure mode/Ad-hoc mode), Bluetooth^® 2.1+EDR (A2DP/AVRCP/HSP)

PSP-2000 Specs:

Dimensions: 6.7"/170 mm wide x 2.9"/74 mm high x .9"/23 mm deep
Weight: .62 lbs/280 g (including battery)
CPU: PSP CPU (1-333 MHz) MIPS32 R4000-based CPU
GPU: 2 MB onboard VRAM running at 166 MHz, and includes 32 MB main RAM and 4 MB embedded DRAM in total.
Memory: 64 MB Main Memory, 4 MB embedded DRAM
Display:  4.3", 16:9 widescreen TFT LCD screen, 480 x 272 pixels, 16.77 million colors, maximum luminance 180/130/80 cd/m2 (when using battery pack), maximum luminance 200/180/130/ 80 cd/m2 (when using AC adaptor)
Sound:  built-in stereo speakers, headset connector
Connectors, Ports and Drives:  IEEE 802.11b (Wi-Fi), USB 2.0 (mini-B), AV out, Memory Stick Duo, DC in 5 V connector, headset connector, UMD drive (Read only)
Buttons and Switches:  d-pad, analog nub, triangle, circle, cross, square, right and left shoulder, Start, Select, and Home, Power/Hold, display brightness, sound, volume up, volume down, wireless LAN on/off
Power: Lithium-ion battery, AC adaptor
Access control:  UMD region coding, parental control

(Source: Sony Computer Entertainment.) 

PSP Vita vs PSP 2000

The new specs boast some improvements to the platform.  The Quad Core Processor and improved networking options would be selling points for me.  But the storage options right now are no improvement over the previous offerings. 

Current prices are listing the Vita 32GB card at $100.  It doesn't seem Sony learned anything from their earlier PSP failures.  I don't want to have to carry around multiple memory cards for games.  Give us better storage options than this and I might consider going back to a PSP.

PSP Gaming

I found the PSP was a great platform and I enjoyed gaming and watching movies on the system.  The music playback was excellent and the ability to expand to a larger capacity Memory Stick was very appealing.  The problem was finding the larger capacity Memory Stick.  At the time, 8GB was it locally, with the 16GB option being out of my price range.  

Since the influx of cheaper Memory devices, prices have dropped.  But in 2009, I would have had to fork out $100 just to get 16GB or storage.  No Thank you.  Sony also was not developing new titles for the platform and seemed to fall back on retro PS One and PS2 titles to fill in the gaps.

I was not a fan of PS2, at all.  While I was able to find many of the retro titles that I had on my GBA SP, the fact that it seemed the PSP was doomed motivated me to try other gaming options. For around the same price as a PSP, I could also move into the Netbook territory and unlock even better gaming options.

 Portable Gaming

Now the "portable gaming" issue, I feel was resolved for me back in 2009.  I purchased a netbook, unlocking PC gaming in a small form factor.  My first netbook was an Asus EeePc 701.  The system had a 900 Celeron, 1 gig of RAM, a 32GB SD card and was running Windows XP Pro.  Running a PC, you don't have to worry about overly proprietary video or audio formats - I could run movies via VLC Media Player or Winamp, and could watching movies and Tv Shows on Hulu.

The system was able to play Unreal Tournament '99 and 2004 as well as Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy quite well.  The sound on that particular system was excellent.  There was no lag in game play apart from the initial boot of the game.  But the 7" screen made gaming somewhat difficult - everything was tiny.  Normal PC usage required use of 800x600 resolution, and many regular desktop programs had problems operating in that resolution.  So that system ended up being sold.

In December of 2009, I bought the HP Mini 110 as a replacement for my aging IBM Thinkpad and the Asus I had sold.  The HP Mini has a 10" screen adn is able to to 1024 x 600 resolution.  I am able to play most of my older PC games ( I have a list in another review) with little accommodation and no lag.

If I buy another netbook, it would have to be one of the dual core HP Minis that uses an Nvidia Ion Graphics card.  So I will be able to run almost all of my current games, with the exception of the newer titles.  But the ability to play them anywhere means the actual need for a portable console is not really needed.

What are your thoughts?