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When the PSP arrived in the UK 19 years ago, the staggering power crammed into a portable for £180 was a mind-blower, putting the likes of WipEout and Ridge Racer in the palms of our sweaty young hands.
The Vita followed at £230 in 2011, or £280 for the 3G version, setting free the visual fidelity of Uncharted and Killzone on an OLED portable for anywhere-play. They blew our retinas, if not as many wallets.
After being badly wounded by the Vita's market performance, 2023's £199 surprise gadget PlayStation Portal is a modest success (the PS5's best-selling accessory according to analysts) but little more than a fancy streaming box, likely deliberately hampered by Sony to make way for the then-mythical PSP2.
But now that rumours of a PSP2 are firming up with hardware deals allegedly being done, the key points are prices and games. (Sorry for the terrible AI logo, but the best of a really bad bunch.)
"Get your PSP2, only £380 with no pack-in game?"
When the PSP2 arrives, it will land into a more confusing market than the Vita did, a volatile era of handheld gadgets, with £350-£600 Steam Decks, the Rog Ally from £480-£799 and Android machines flying out of Chinese factories like the AYN Odin 2 Mini Pro retailing from around £450.
Other prices to consider are Sony's own family. Scouting around online, the current entry points into PlayStation-land are:
- PlayStation 4: £250
- PlayStation 5 discless: £390
- PlayStation 5 disc: £475
- PlayStation Portal: £195
- PlayStation 5 Pro: £699
- PlayStation 6: TBC (likely £499/£550)
But the only true current point of comparison is the Nintendo Switch from around £250 to £280 (for the OLED model). With rumours of a $400 (£300) Switch 2 price point, this makes me wonder what the price point for the much-mooted and mightily powerful PSP2 would be?
Any PSP2 would have to be more powerful than the Switch 2 to maintain PlayStation's powerhouse-branding, so is a £320-£380 price point likely to distinguish PlayStation from Nintendo and the horsepower-gadget brigade, while under the may-as-well-get-a-PS5 magic number?
Two things is Sony's favour, the company can negotiate very favourable component terms thanks to scale, and it can take a hit on prices if there are plenty of tempting first-party games to even out the budget.
A Scalable PlayStation Portable Game Frenzy?
What Sony must avoid is the must-we-have-this-every-time? shitstorm of expensive proprietary memory. The PS4 and PS5 have made big strides on affordable(ish) expandability, and Sony's portable rivals are dripping in ports and slots for all types of micro storage.
Going beyond that simple request, dare we dreaming of a system where variants with CPU/GPU and storage upgrades can add power depending on the buyers budget, or would that go against Sony's (almost) one-size fits all approach?
Finally there's the slightly important question of games. Has the PlayStation Studios family quietly been beavering away on new Killzone, LBP or Syphon Filter titles? Has Sony managed to reconstitute Japan Studios for original games that will appeal to the homeland audience?
None of that sounds feasible, so where are the games coming from, and what impact will the have to drive sales? Without them PSP2 is dead in the water, no matter what streaming or local access it provides to the archive of PlayStation history.
With any formal news unlikely until early next year, there's still plenty of time for Sony to scrap the idea, like the specs of a Vita 2 which must be lurking on a Sony server somewhere. Or delay it until all the pieces are in place, but its a more realistic dream to cling to than Sony's performance and total focus on PS5 of recent years would suggest.
Having read the article, what do think a likely PSP2 price point would be?
— Portable Gaming Roundup (@psp2roundup) October 14, 2024
Currently playing on my Vita/PS4/PS5
