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Comment by chongli | Hacker News Reader

I never had a PSP but also didn’t really want one after seeing my friend’s. It seemed way too fragile and complicated, not rugged and simple like Nintendo portables.

It also had a bigger problem in that it seemed to be designed for (and built a library of) ports from regular consoles. I’ve always believed full console ports make lousy portable games because they’re not designed for stop-and-go play sessions. I’m not interested in playing through some epic boss battle in God of War while waiting in line at the grocery store. On the other hand, I’m totally fine with playing a few moves in a quick adventure/puzzle/strategy game on a DS.

And that’s the crux of it. PSP seems to be designed for portable play only around the house. In that case I’d rather just have a regular console.

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> I’ve always believed full console ports make lousy portable games because they’re not designed for stop-and-go play sessions.

I realized this after purchasing a Steam Deck. Initially I installed things like Apex Legends (rip) and Doom Eternal, but even with gyro and trackpads, it's just didn't feel great on a small screen. I will admit playing through the entire Master Chief Collection over various transits made my inner child kind of giddy. But Halo's chapter format and slow-paced combat makes it kind of an unique fit.

On the go I now mostly use my Deck for things like Slay The Spire, Ori, Okami, Hollow Knight, Tails of Iron, Stardew Valley, Baba is You, etc; Docked with a TV, playing the aforementioned FPS is fine. Or party games like Heave-Ho :-).

To be honest, I do kind of wish for a Vita-like, running SteamOS, with enough horsepower to run previously mentioned OTG games. Key factor is to be 'pocketable'.

> And that’s the crux of it. PSP seems to be designed for portable play only around the house. In that case I’d rather just have a regular console.

Sometimes the TV gets relinquished to the other half, in which case its nice to stil snuggle up instead of sequestering yourself to the study.

The impression I have is that 'game playing devices' coming out now are picking points on a speed-quality-cost style trilemma triangle, except it's desktop PC/couch+TV console/portables. All the different products are picking different points in the triangle to see if there's a market, if laptops are a step away from desktops, then the GPD Win is a second step towards portables, the steam deck is third. The software side also answers another desire that a lot of people have which is to have PC games with a more console-like management experience, and the desire for the steambox to do something similar for HTPC form factor never went away.

> It seemed way too fragile and complicated

The thing is an absolute tank. I vividly remember the horror of dropping mine onto a concrete floor from a significant height – with no consequences, other than a minor paint chip.

And the thing features an optical disk drive! Between that and MiniDisc, I'm still convinced that Sony's mechanical engineers are wizards.

I feel like with sleep mode on the DS, PSP and later handhelds that became mostly moot anyways. There are still great OG Game Boy games I probably wouldn't want to play in the grocery store line (e.g., Link's Awakening) but with sleep mode it doesn't really matter. You just stop whenever, pick up whenever. Arguably the PSP suffered from not going all in on console style gaming with just a single analog stick. SO many games on there suffered from that.

The PSP was definitely more complicated, and perhaps more fragile but it felt incredibly futuristic in early 2005. Graphics basically as good as my home PS2, you could watch really high quality movies, music on the go, browse the web.

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