High Technology Product Reviews | Trends and News

The Sony PSP has been a premier mobile gaming platform for the past five years, but it was always a bit large for a portable system. Sony's answer: The PSP go ($249.99 direct), a shrunken-down version of the PSP that eschews the UMD optical drive and game cartridges for 16GB of internal storage, download-only titles, and a new slider design. The screen is bright, the controls are responsive, the storage is sufficient, and Sony's online download store is reliable and robust. The problem is that the PSP go is really only for gamers who are new to the PSP platform, not the faithful who have stuck with Sony for a half-decade. If you fit into the latter group, you're better off sticking with your original, albeit chunkier, PSP-1000, or buying the slightly smaller PSP-3000 ($169.99 direct) if you want to get in on multiplayer games. With the PSP go, Sony is poised to compete with other portable gaming platforms, including the Nintendo DS Lite and Apple's iPod touch—at least