SlashNOT

Matthew writes: While Thursday’s much anticipated launch of the PSP didn’t quite meet expectations with big retailers like K-Mart and Target failing to sell out, the PSP has nonetheless probably sold enough units to survive.

But will it?

By launching a device with an integrated proprietary mini-DVD reader (called UMD), Sony has shown that they simply don’t understand what consumer’s want and that they didn’t learn their lesson with the Minidisc format that took years of not selling to flounder. Movies on UMD will cost about $ 20 each and can only be played on the PSP. Why buy them when you can get the DVD cheaper and play it on anything? UMD games cost $ 40 to $ 50, and the unusual format guarantees that only mega-hits will be available. There won’t be any porting of classics that could have sold for a few bucks each to dedicated users.

The PSP can connect to the Internet directly via its built-in WiFi adapter. If you don’t have broadband and wireless you can just go to one of the many available public WiFi hotspots and use theirs. The purpose for wireless? Head to head gaming, apparently.

Imagine a Sony that had thought about the entire process. The process of integrating their hardware with their content. Imagine if the PSP had come with a 40GB hard disk drive like an iPod instead of the UMD drive.

When you turned it on, it could have automatically brought up “The Sony Store” where users could have purchased games, music, and movies for download to the device immediately, to be stored on the 40GB hard disk, with no PC required (or complicated synchronization, cables, requirement that you be at home, etc.)

That amount of space would be sufficient to store about 50 movies and games—far more than anyone is ever going to buy for their device. And it could store many thousands of MP3s. Because it uses WiFi, there would have been no bank-busting monthly contract that plagues cell phone based devices like N-Gauge. Players could have gotten together and decided which games to play, with those not having the game able to buy and download it immediately. Welcome to the world where you sell an end user twenty videogames at $ 20 each on impulse in six months instead of two $ 50 video games when you happend to find something you like at the store–and then abandon the device because you’re tired of those two games and trying to justify spending $ 50 on a videogame.

Sony had a chance to kill Apple and the iPod with an easy-to-use compelling competitor that Apple could not technically match. Sony owns a major game studio. They own a major record label. And they own a major motion picture studio. They own the rights to al the types of actual content that the PSP can utilize. By using direct digital download they could cut out the middle man and offered a wide range of titles that wouldn’t be subject to the vagaries of inventory, stock, and distribution. Titles could have remained online forever, instead of going through the “bang-bust-disappear” cycle of traditional media publishing–whic means that users could get exactly what they want, when they want it, for a reasonable price. Without having to have a computer, a monthly contract, or even their own Internet access.

Imagine if Sony had put a hard disk in the PSP instead of a UMD reader. Imagine if Sony had vision.

April Fools! Just kidding!