This post was originally drafted up a couple of months ago, when it was called “How to save the PSPGo”. After having a bit of a think though, it seems unlikely that such a chance exists. So I changed the title to better reflect my take on the situation.

So anyway, the PSPGo. A great idea for a product, absolutely wasted on the product itself.

It must have sounded so good. Take the PSP, with its decent catalogue of titles, and make it smaller, lighter, and get rid of that crappy UMD drive that everyone has always complained about and has increased the loading times of games. You also keep all of its media playing capabilities, and its theoretically great links to the PS3 (though I’m not sure how many people actually use that stuff to play their games on the other side of the world).

The actual hardware of a PSPGo is small and lovely – it’s only slightly bigger than an iPhone, and I’m pretty sure it’s smaller than my DSi – and is an improvement in every way over the previous PSP models. It’s very comfortable to hold, has a decent battery life and the load times are shorter than before (though still strangely long on some games).

But the public never warmed to the PSPGo. Admittedly it was released at a time when the PSP had already been on a steady decline, with new releases becoming rarer and rarer (due in some part to developers being scared off by poor sales. It’s sort of a vicious downward cycle).

How could Sony save some face with the PSPGo, and possibly allow it some sort of Indian Summer?

Firstly, drop the price. It was always overpriced, but there is the argument that a high price affords an item a more desirable status. However, it’s pretty clear at this point that the thing is never going to sell gangbusters. You could still improve sales by dropping £75 off the RRP, lowering it closer to an impulse buy for gadget fans. Especially in the face of the (almost certainly true) rumours that a PSP2 is just around the corner, keeping it at the launch RRP seems foolish.

Release more back catalogue titles onto the PSN store. As publishers are apparently reluctant to persue this themselves, they may need some slight financial incentive – so Sony should be offering deals of one off payments per title released. At the end of the day Sony will make this money back in their cut of the game’s sale.

In particular they should be targeting the games that are regarded as big PSP classics, such as Lumines, that currently aren’t available due to licensing issues. Licensing issues almost always can be made to go away with the application of money. While they are looking at the store, work on getting more games released to more stores. With digital distribution there shouldn’t be so many titles locked to one store or another, and currently some territories look very bare in comparison to others.

Scrap the weekly releases. I don’t understand this at all, unless it is an attempt to make the week’s releases look impressive by bundling them together into one update as opposed to spreading them out. But as a customer, I would like games and DLC as soon as possible. Checking the online store is no particular inconvenience to me, unlike trekking into town to go to the nearest game retailer, so I don’t mind doing it multiple times a week. This would also benefit developers slightly, as customers are more likely to buy for small amounts more frequently, rather than splurge a large amount on a number of games on the same day. Developers shouldn’t have to compete with each other for money once a week.

Sony could also enforce a better pricing scheme. Honestly there are so many games that are hugely overpriced it’s just not even funny any more. Who pays £31 for a PSP game? And the pricing differences between regional stores is ludicrous too (Prinny – Can I Really Be The Hero was twice as expensive on the UK store as the US one, for example). Thankfully this seems to be on the mend – or it may just be a one off case of good fortun – as ModNation Racers has released at £16.99 on PSN, compared to the UMD version’s RRP of £24.99. Even taking into account the immediate discounting of online retailers, the downloadable release is still a pound (a pound!) cheaper.

Finally I would recommend that Sony force developers to create the downloadable version of any future PSP titles for simultaneous release with the UMD version. This should be part of submission, with both versions required. Players should not be further inconvenienced and disappointed as titles they are anticipating and want to spend money on are delayed, or not released at all, on their PSPGo.