Opinion Editorial, By Ben Brody


Sony, looking to chip away at teenage girls's fascinations with the Nintendo DS, announced a fancy new PSP Pack. The Pink PSP. It'll come with a lilac (let's face it, it's pink) colored PSP-3000, a Hannah Montana game, and a 2gb Memory stick preloaded with a few Hannah Montana episodes. While I don't exactly think there's anything wrong with the PSP it seems to me that the market they are trying to corner is going to always go with the DS when they realize that the most "girly" PSP game that exists is called Ratchet and Clank Size Matters. It's slated to hit shelves in July.

Farbeit from me to claim to be the foremost authority on girls age 10-16's habits but I don't exactly think the PSP fits them for the reason that it is a game device clearly aimed at males age 18-35. Most PSP games are either action or RPG or sports based and don't have the draw that a Professor Layton or Petz has, and certainly not Mario. While now is definitely not the time to make a first party mascot, Nintendo makes bank with every Mario game released, even the bad ones. Sony (and for that matter Microsoft) don't have a first party character that can imeediatly appeal to everybody of all ages like a Mario or even a Sonic.

With the lackluster 2009 outlook that the PSP has (let's be honest, you can count the number of big release PSP announced for 2009 on one hand), it seems that instead of focusing on new PSP hardware, SCE (Sony Computer Entertainment) should be focusing more on making quality video games for the system, instead of new colors of hardware whose technology is arguably worse than it's predecessor's (Scanlines anybody?)

While I'm a huge PSP fan and still use it everyday, I find it hard to believe that a pink colored PSP is going to at all dent the DS's fanbase especially with the new DSi slated to hit US stores in April.

I'd love to hear your opinion! Leave a comment!