Yeah, I think you covered all the bases that say why I won't ever buy a PSP Go!

But the idiots will still buy them and upgrade year after year.

As I've always said, consumers are the reason for poor customer service, they don't financially hold companies responsible for their poor behavior.

Sony has been treating it's customers like crap for years, yet every time a new Play Station comes out they run like lemmings to Best Buy and get one on the first day.

As long as consumers are willing to pay money to be treated like trash by the very companies they are supporting, then customer service will never improve.

The reasons not to get a Go seem ever increasing.

The PSP itself is nice (though I prefer my DS), but man, it looks like Sony doesn't want people to buy this.

A very valid experiement into new technology, but an experiement that seems destined to fail with how they've gone about with the Go.

It seems the best way to get your point across to Sony here is with your wallet. I've been convinced not to buy one...I'm sure many others have been, too.

I have a feeling that low sales are going to kill this product.

@Bluth Certified Law Firm: I agree. Ive been considering picking up a PSP, but after reading stories like this, I think I'll just pick up a used 3rd edition PSP.
I'm not a fan of the whole DLC idea anyways. If I'm going to shell out 40 bucks for a game, it had better be a tangible item that I can do whatever I want with when I tired of it.d

And this is why I purchased an Xbox 360 over the PS3. With my Gamertag I can re-download anything I have purchased an unlimited number of times.

Just another reason to not buy the PSP Go.

This is yet another case of legitimate customers being hurt because people abuse a customer-friendly policy. Sony did the right thing by letting you use downloadable games on 5 different systems, but then people took that as an invitation to share their games with 4 of their friends. Now people who didn't abuse the system have to jump through hoops to prove they're not scammers.

@Cant_stop_the_rock:

Yep another reason why copy protection does nothing but hurt the consumer. We have to jump through hoops while the guy sitting next to you with a modded system can rent a game and simply copy it to a memory card and play forever.

@gjones77: The last time a full-size Playstation came out, the lemmings rushed to Best Buy to buy Wiis.

@Cant_stop_the_rock: It's not a customer friendly policy, it's a customer-hostile policy. It's based on the assumption that all their customers are two-bit thieves and we can't trust them to a download, so we're going to set limits on stuff they OWN, and who cares who gets screwed.

@gjones77: Actually, the PS3 didn't start selling in big numbers until Sony reduced the prices to something reasonable. To be honest, I think the PS3 at the current prices, plus free PSN (which isn't as robust as Live, IMO) is a pretty good value.

@HazyCloud: Your logic is completely flawed. First of all, we're talking about a hand-held device, not a console. You decided to buy a console system that has reputation of consistently breaking down and the company behind it has a solid track record of fudging up repairs nor maintaining solid customer service. And you did this because another company that sells a hand-held device won't let customers register over a certain number of devices? How does that make any sense? I agree that the PSP Go wasn't thought out very well, but Christ man... if you are even a somewhat regular reader around here you should know how much Microsoft has been bending over its customers for years and you're all taking it with a smile.

Also, let's hope that no one decides to steal your console, thus taking your precious Gamertag along with it. Let's see how much success you then have re-downloading anything then, shall we? Link

@HazyCloud:
I am a 360 owner too, and I agree that is a nice feature.

But that feature has had it's share of bad press too. Not sure if it was ever resolved, but because of gamertag verification, you could be locked out of your games if you couldn't sign into Live. This could occur if you had to have your system replaced, which, I think, was all of us.

I don't want to buy a PSP Go because of its resemblance to the wrist-mounted self-destruct device from Predator. I don't want to try to enter the Konami Code and accidentally blow up the jungle!

My husband and I are and always have been pretty big gamers. Although we have and love our original PS2, and a PSP that rarely gets played (we too prefer our DS but the PSP comes out on long car/plane rides), I refused to buy a PS3 and I refuse to buy the PSP Go. Sony did great for a while, making itself the forerunner in this market, but starting with the original PSP started to go downhill. The PS3 remains an overpriced DVD player, with no games we're interested in that I can't get on my 360. Making matters worse is the fact that it's not even backwards compatible.

The idea of being able to just download games onto the PSP Go sounds great until you start thinking about the general iffy-ness of downloaded content, the rights arguments, etc, etc. I haven't even cared to look into whether or not I can download games I've already purchased for the original PSP or if I would have to purchase them again for the Go. I'll stick with my Nintendo & Microsoft products.

@chrisclaus:

Yea, they are only shooting themselves in the foot here by how they are marketing their product. Why the greatly increased price? It isn't like this thing is greatly superior to the current PSP. What about offering a modified add-on to allow current game owners to add their games to their new PSP Go? They just insert the game in, and it copies the game to their PSP Go. If they want they could always add encryption to better protect it. Would be a great step in the direction of showing that you care.

They also currently have not provided something really tangible to get people to jump on this product either. Nintendo essentially did the same thing with their new crappy DS. The cost of the games are the same price as if you bought an actual product, except you can't sell it, let a friend borrow it, etc. Sony got so greedy, they didn't want to pass on the savings to the consumer for not having to manufacture the games anymore.

The other part is the retail store incentive. All that retail stores can make money from is accessories since there are no actual games to sell anymore. Unless they are thinking of something like game code cards anyways.

Again another failure of design on Sony's part. No screen protection. So great, it slides in and protects your buttons, the screen is left in the open for damage as with all its predecessors. Even Nintendo figured out a smart way to protect the screen of their handhelds.

There is one thing that is kind of sad I have seen from all companies. They have decided to disregard backward compatibility now. Before it was something they would market, now it is something they have no interest in pursuing anymore. Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft are all guilty of this.

@jaya9581:

Except that Microsoft's service is ass-awful, and your 360 failure rates are bordering on criminal. That and to play in a non-local environment you have to pay for the right to access your personal internet connection. If you decide you don't want to pay for Live, how do you get patches and firmware updates?

The PS3 is an under-priced DVD/BlueRay/PC/Video Game console. Maybe not under priced, but certainly functions a hell of a lot better as an all-in-one than a bricked 360, dontcha think?

There ARE easy ways to deactivate a PSP, so long as you still have access to it.

You can de-activate a PSP via the "Account Management" under the PlayStation Network tab on the PSP, or on Sony's website here as long as you can plug the PSP in to your computer via USB.

@Dondegroovily:

Also known as reality. Remember Napster? It was an issue with the RIAA because it was a legitimate threat to their industry. Apple got the hint that downloading was the wave of the future and has ridden a for-profit model to billions of dollars in revenues.

Implicit in your argument is the idea that a person purchasing a digital copy of the game is the same as buying the hard copy. But it isn't, and it says as much when you read the fine print with respects to DLC rights.

@DollaValueLIFO:

And in case you hadn't noticed, businesses are rarely going to be customer friendly to the point of lost revenues. If each group of five friends buys an average of 20 unique titles a year (probably more given the cost savings of the piracy ring), that's roughly $4k lost in sales because of the ability of the consumer to re-download content. In this case, Sony has decided that going past this point is unreasonable to their business design.

@DollaValueLIFO: Actually, you don't have to pay for Live Gold (which allows you to play online multiplayer) in order to get patches/updates. Those come standard with Live Silver, which everyone gets and which is free. If I was a 13-year-old boy and wanted to try out some new swear words I learned at school, I might care about having Live Gold. But when my friends and I want to play a game together, we play it either on the PC or just go to each other's houses.

I've had my 360 RROD once, this past summer (it was about 3 years old). Even though the problem was intermittent, Microsoft sent us a box and replaced it for free, within a two-week time period. No argument, no hassle.

As far as the PS3 being an underpriced game console, maybe you haven't looked at the current pricing state of game consoles? Until its recent price drop, it was the most expensive game console out there. You could buy a PC capable of playing a lot (read: not all) of games that was less expensive than a PS3. At a recent trip to GameStop, I saw they were selling USED PS3s for the same price as NEW 360s.

With regular DVD still the standard for movies (versus Blu-Ray) and with it not looking like that will change any time soon, I'm perfectly content with my 360.

@gjones77: That may work for some things but for specialized electronics like this, when dealing directly with the manufacturer it's hard to hold them accountable when they're the only ones making the product you want.

If it's a retail store that the issue is with, for example Joe's Store gives me a hard time about returning a shirt, I can vote with my money and just go to Frank's Store next time I need a shirt.

Or if it's something that lots of people manufacture, like a car, clothing or food, or something like a vacuum cleaner or even a cell phone or PC where I have a choice of comparable manufacturers, that works too.

But if I want a PSP and Sony does something stupid/annoying/whatever, I can't go anywhere else to get a different device that does exactly the same thing. I could get a DS instead of a PSP, but if a PSP is what I really want, I'm S-O-L. I could still vote with my money by not buying anything at all, but then my "need" is left unsatisfied.

A. I believe the end user license covers the authorization and deauthorization and content you can keep.

B. User seems to know about deauthorization, and should have known about policy.

C. This whole article seems to be based on a 2 message thread. It looks like it can be resolved by calling Sony. It seems Consumerist is going out of its way to bash the PSPGo.

"Except that Microsoft's service is ass-awful, and your 360 failure rates are bordering on criminal."

@DollaValueLIFO: Funny.... Xbox Live works flawlessly for me, with rarely any system problems over the last 6+ years, and I'm still on my launch 360.

I don't understand what people are doing to these things to get them to RRoD. Play them 12 hours a day while they're wrapped in blankets?

@jaya9581: Now it's a REALLY overpriced DVD player since their latest firmware is bricking consoles left and right.

Maybe if I transfuse Erwin Rommel's blood in to the console it will come back to life...(per the ad and Consumersist post a few days back).

Unfortunately, Sony tried to be more user friendly with their downloadable games and content, and this is the result. With Microsoft's content you have to be signed into your LIVE account to access it. For Sony's, you just have to have the content present on the system. To prevent major exploitation by groups of people buying a single copy and then copying it to multiple systems (i.e. game-sharing), Sony had to implement the 5-download limit. They don't make it a secret that you're limited to 5 downloads, and it sounds like calling them can get the issue resolved. So I don't know what the big deal is.

Since the user in the OP posted directly to Sony's forums, I'm going to assume his complaint is valid and he isn't part of some game-sharing group. However, owning 5 or more PSPs with this problem is actually pretty unlikely. First of all, downloading games to the PSP has only been around for a couple of years (after the release of the PSP slim). So the 4-iteration, always upgrading idea, loses one iteration. Secondly, unless a household is full of gamers, owning more than 2 PSPs seems extremely unlikely. Even if the household has more than one, buying a game for one PSP and then downloading it to both, in the eyes of the terms of service/EULA, is the same as if it was done by two strangers. You buy a game for an account/user, not for a household. So, while the OP user is probably genuine, this type of situation being legitimate seems extremely unlikely.

There is, of course, always the possibility of deleting games to free up space on a memory stick and then wanting to redownload them later. This seems like a more likely possibility for why the OP user needs to call Sony. Again, though, 5 downloads is plenty to account for the occasional need to redownload after a space-freeing deletion. Sony could solve this problem outright by putting the downloads on a timer. Maybe only allow up to 5 downloads for the first year. After a year, you get a download back every 3 months or something.

@gjones77: You know, just because someone determines that a certain product is worth the cost to them, doesn't necessarily make them an "idiot". Something that may be worth every penny to you may be a stupid purchase for me.

If someone gets a great deal of enjoyment out of a certain console, wanting to buy it as soon as it comes out doesn't make them a "lemming," either. Although you seem to suggest that they should follow your lead in not purchasing things you don't think are worth it.

I'm really tired of people judging other's purchases based on their own needs as a consumer.

(The only hand-held I own is an original Game Boy.)

@Murph1908: That's why the made the License Transfer Tool on xbox.com. It lets you move your DRM Licenses to your new 360, so you can play downloaded games and DLC when not connected to Live.

@CapeMonkey: I suspected as much. It probably says as much in the manual too.

@HazyCloud: My Xbox constantly forgets that I've downloaded certain Map Packs, and I always have to re-download them. :-(

@PhiCancri: The 360 suits my purposes far better than any other console on the market. All I really care about is online multi-player gaming, so using the system with the most stable, most populated multi-player setup is definitely the best choice for me.

All of the consoles have issues, you should pick the one that best suits your particular needs.

major waste of money
what if you are someone who doesn't know much about the PSP go, other than the tv ads
you buy a ton of over priced games for your old PSP then you find that it doesn't work on your new PSP.

Sliding screens are also bad, cellphones with them often eventually fail because the constant movement due to sliding the screen will break the ribbon cable connecting to the screen

they also worked to make it harder to mod.

so to the gamer, you loose game support (no one likes having to re buy games)

to the power user, you get less features overall

@JennQPublic: The problem is, and this may shock you, a PS3 isn't a need, it's a want, no one NEEDS a PS3, they want them.

If Sony stopped making the PS3 the world would not end, there would be plenty of POed gamers running around, but they would find an alternative.

So yes, I do think that a person who pays an inordinate amount of money for a product deserves good customer service from the company that produced the product, and I think any person who again spends their money on a product from that same company after they treated the customer like trash deserves to be called an idiot.

There are other companies (Microsoft, Nintendo) who make competing products, there are also alternative platforms (PC or Mac) on which a person can play games, Sony isn't the only game in town, granted the other options may not be perfect, but there are other options.

So a consumer who continues to subject themselves to abuse from a company, yet still supports that company financially is indeed an idiot.

It's all cut and dry for me.

@thomas_callahan: There's nothing specialized about Sony's product, there are companies that make competing products, so your argument loses it's steam at that point.

Though you can argue that the particular item is specialized in the sense that you need it to use existing games, and I would agree there, but there's no reason to go and purchase their newer version that's incompatible with your existing games, that's asking for abuse and then subsidizing that abuse.

Same thing happened with my PS3. I had a few since they came out because I upgraded the model or got a collectors edition and by the time I got to the current model I had owned a few. I didn't remember seeing anything about have to reauthorize so of course a problem came up and I called to see why I buy content(LBP costumes) turned out I had too many activated consoles. I had to talk to about three people before they deactivated the other consoles and let me activate my current.

This is a problem because people game share so that one person buys a game and lets another person use the account on their PS3 so that the game can be downloaded and played onto other consoles.

iTunes only lets you sync to 5 computers and you HAVE to deauthorize locally.
The only exception is if you get to the max number and ONCE a year you deauthorize EVERYTHING.

On the PSP you can deauthorize either on the device itself, or on the PC or PS3 through USB.

Considering how a PSP doesn't need to be tethered to a PC (Unlike an iPod or iPhone), it can easily be abused if it were to allow unlimited accounts to download from, especially considering it's not online all the time.

This policy has been in place since the Playstation store first opened and is the same as for PS3s.

BUT, considering you can call them up to get more when you need them, it's not a big deal. If they turned him down, it would be, but they don't turn you down.

It actually comical at this point how Sony manages to work even against itself.

@DollaValueLIFO:
You don't need to pay for live to get patches and updates.

The PSP Go is a shot across the bow of used game trading shops like Game Stop. If you do not own a hard copy of the game you bought, then you can't trade it in for someone else to buy it at a less-than-what-Sony's-charging price.

I mean Microsoft and Nintendo have download-only games too, but Sony is unique in trying to get us all to accept that we don't own any games.

On a side note, I guess they called it the "Go" because more honestly naming it the new "PSP Rental", or "PSP Netflix Wannabe", or some such probably would have been detremental to sales.

@gjones77: @gjones77:
I'm sorry, but it isn't "cut and dry". I own a PS3, and have owned in the past PS2, PS1, XBox360, Xbox, N64, Wii... going back to an Atari 2600.
...And that is pretty much all you know about me.
But to let you know something else, I am a responsible, non-idiot adult who has received mixed, but mostly favorable, service from every major video game manufacturer since Nolan Bushnell made a metal box go "beep". When I pay money for something, I figure in the cost for crappy service and for exceptional service. My 360 crapped out, I got screwed by Microsoft (not complaining), and the $300 cost to get a new one was reasonable until I figured the high cost of dealing with Microsoft. I also had a PS3 die on me and Sony was a small, but manageable, pain in the tushie. The $400 replacement factored this in and I still bought one. I figure the 360 will have to be lowered to $100 before it is worth putting up with Microsoft again.
This shows that I went into my purchases weighing options and decided my own financial wants/needs. And if you think this makes me an "idiot", then I strongly suspect you are a particularly nasty fanboy or a Thompson-esque video game hater. Or maybe you are just using arrogance to prevent seing other people's perspectives. Either way, I don't think it is up to you to decide who is an idiot and what someone "needs". (BTW, I strongly suspect you have one or thirty "needs" I might consider "wants". One person's frivolous expense is another person's vital tool. Heh, tool.)

How was this not QA'd and product tested by real gamers not smoking the pole of their Sony managers? HOW?! Everything I can see about the specs of the PSP Go makes it worse than a PSP. Not that a PSP is really that bad, but Jesus H. Christ!

Sony Exec: "Hey guys, how can we lose a boatload of money and make people think poorly about our products?"

Product Development Idiot: "I know, we'll totally fuck up the PSP, make it more expensive, and give less options to the user. We'll also make the screen smaller and the controls cumbersome".

Sony Exec: "BRILLIANT! You'll get an even bigger raise than you did with that Root Kit stuff, M'boy!"

@DoubleEcho: Actually, the screen is only half an inch smaller while keeping the same resolution, so it improves the display by making it less pixelated.
No more ghosting, brighter screen, added Bluetooth and 16GB of memory.
The controls are actually MORE comfortable because your hands curve naturally inward.

Really, the only downsides are loss of UMD, price and older accessory issues.

But sure, rag on a product completely unrelated to the topic at hand, that'll make you look smart.

@M3wThr33: I'm sorry, I thought the PSP Go was part of the topic. You mean to tell me this thread is about huge boxes for an SD card? My bad!

Seriously though, the screen on the PSP-2000 is plenty bright. Bluetooth for a hand-held gaming device - not very important to me. I'd like to be able to just turn it on and play as well, and not wait a long time for updates.

You missed a few other downsides - shoddy wireless (ArsTechnica had a reiew on it and the connection kept dropping during updates, causing them to have to restart downloading them all over again), still stuck at Wireless B (!!!) instead of upgrading to Wireless G at the very least, and you can't replace the damn battery. It's supposed to be a portable device - what happens when the battery ultimately gives up the ghost? It's esstentially worthless then unless you're always plugged into AC power.

Just call it what it is - epic product development fail. If they scrap it and start over now they can hopefully avoid unhappy customers and be ready for next Christmas with a better product.

But then again, this IS Sony....

I'm surprised they didn't just go the route of Nintendo and make little flash cartridges for the latest PSP model. With Flash memory decreasing in price, and being ever so small but still allowing for a large capacity, it almost seems like a no brainer with handhelds these days. I would totally buy one if that were the case, since I can hold a couple of DS games in my wallet to swap out.

Granted it still wouldn't address the issue of the older UMD games, but at least I would own a physical copy of my game, which is the biggest reason I'm not interested in the PSP Go. The design is nifty, but no physical game media for major releases is a no go for me.

Then again, I gladly paid for games like Half-Life 2 and Team Fortress 2 through Steam, but their model is far more acceptable: sign into Steam on any computer you want, as many as you want, and even install your games, but you can only be playing them actively on your account on one machine at a time. Still DRM, but it's actually DRM done right in my opinion.

@Burzmali:

You don't have to be logged into Xbox Live. Being logged into Xbox Live is one option, the other option is to be using the system that was used to purchase the content. The content is tied to that system, and you don't need to log in to Live to play it. You can also (once per year) transfer all of your content to a new console which becomes the "authorized" console for that content. And if your console has to be replaced under warranty, MS will do the transfer for you.

So effectively most people don't need to be logged into Live to play downloadable games/content. Sony's method has the advantage that you never have to be logged into PSN to play your games, Microsoft's method has the advantage that you have no hard limit of how many consoles you can play the content on - as long as you bring your gamertag with you.

@DoubleEcho:

Sony thinks the PSP Go is competing with the iPod Touch, but they don't understand that the primary feature of the PSP (playing games) is at best the third most significant feature of the iPod Touch (after playing media and being an Internet-enabled PDA), and the PSP Go fails at one of the Touch's more significant features (PDA) because it doesn't have a touch screen.

There is clearly some overlap between the iPod Touch and the PSP, but I think you will very rarely see someone narrow down their choices to those two options.

@ModernTenshi04: I agree on the flash cartridges. The other issue with the PSP Go is that Sony controls the entire retail market for the games. They're basically shutting out all of the retailers; And once you buy a game, if it sucks you can't trade it in. How do you sell a download?

@madog:

Well, a Sony exec said the other day that people might see the PSPGo, see the price and buy one for themselves. They'll then turn around and buy a regular PSP for their son/daughter or whatever! So they can use the PSPgo to sell more PSPs and end up selling 2 products due to the PSPgo's price! Isn't this a great selling plan?

I wish I could make up that insane thought process but I sadly can't. I like logic.

@mrsultana: You're right, I do have things considered "wants", I freely admit that, but I'm not complaining that the company that made them treats me like trash, and go and drop another $500 - $600 on their products.