The Sony handheld PSP was released in Japan Dec 12th 2004. America March 24th 2005, with a European launch in the spring of 2005. PSP comes in a black colour, with a 16:9 widescreen TFT LCD centered in a sleek ergonomic design with a high quality finish.

The dimensions are 170mm x 74mm x 23mm with a weight of 260g. PSP features a high-quality TFT LCD that displays full color (16.77 million colors) on a 480 x 272 pixel high resolution screen. It also comes complete with the basic functions of a portable player such as built in stereo speakers, exterior headphone connector, brightness control and sound mode selection. The Japanese machine can also be put into full UK text in the options.

PSP also comes equipped with diverse input/output connectors such as USB 2.0, and 802.11b (Wi-Fi) wireless LAN. PSP adopts a small but high-capacity optical medium UMD(TM) (Universal Media Disc), enabling game software, rich with full motion video and other forms of digital entertainment content, to be stored.

With the new Nintendo DS handheld released around the same time in Japan it will be interesting to see how the two machines square up to each other on release! Especially as the DS has been released in the states & Europe first. After the E3 show 2004 in the states many felt the edge went to Sony, but saying that, Nintendo have their loyal following and with the great option of the touch screen and a double screen, the originality at the moment (as usual) goes to Nintendo.

'Do I buy the universal Media Disc based, widescreen, USB 2.0 Memory Stick, PS2 powerful, water thin movie machine that will likely give birth to a pile of killer apps, or the cart based wallet fat, one speaker, less powerful, voice recognition, chat, handwriting, dual screen system from Nintendo that has interesting potential ? if nothing else, it will be an interesting battle'

Dave Halverson Editor-in-chief Play Magazine 2004.

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Previewed at E3 May 2004

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