I’ve developed a kind of a peculiar rapport with one of the employees at the GameStop location nearest my house. In the past he’s been nice enough to volunteer certain bits of otherwise private or unreleased insight, such as how to get a sold out game without a reservation (read: he simply sold it to me) and the fact that buying used games at GameStop, though often overpriced, is a great way to rent games for free given the return policy (not that I do that at all!).  This was precisely the case this afternoon  when the kind gent randomly offered to show me one of the new PSP Go units they got in. There was absolutely no way I was going to pass up this opportunity.

The first thing I noticed was how small and attractive the retail packaging was. This was a white unit, so it probably held even greater favor on my part by default — not that I have anything against the black models. Either way, when he started to open the box I said, “Dude, are you going to sell that?”, to which he assured me that this was the unit he planned on buying for himself. At that point, I had no reservations whatsoever (pun intended).

The first touch was a huge disappointment. I felt like the controls were totally out of place, seemingly more a function of sticking with prefab design as opposed to sound ergonomics. Nevertheless, I gave the Go the benefit of the doubt to the extent that I might get used to the layout down the line. What I could not get over, however, was how cheap it felt for the price. Reminder: a full-blown PS3 is a mere $50 more than a PSP Go. You know how some plastics have a certain high-quality feel? This thing had none of that. Early reports that it looked and felt like the old Mylo are absolutely true. I would bet a lot of money (enough for a Go!) that Sony went out of its way to borrow from their own tired designs and manufacturing processes, a notion that seems rather un-Sony, to be honest.

By contrast, I remember the exact day, March 24, 2005, when I waited on a short line at a Target in a bad neighborhood to purchase the original PSP on day one. Even then it was expensive at $249, but there was NOTHING like it for one, and for two, when I opened the box I was blown away by the look and feel of it. This was the Ferrari of handhelds. The PSP Go, on the other hand, feels like a Toyota Yaris. You can tell it’s a decent car, but you buy it not because you want to but because you have to. Its price is a reflection of that. Only with the PSP Go, you’re getting a Yaris when you could be buying a Ferrari for the same money.

Granted, it does do some cool stuff. I’m really a big proponent of eliminating the UMD. It’s a loud, clunky battery gobbler on dated proprietary format. Didn’t they learn anything from MiniDisc? Apparently not. At the same time, despite any positive feelings I had about the removal of the drive, Sony pretty much guarantees that players will be shafted when it comes to competitive pricing on new games and other content. The market has ultimate control of the cost of physical media by the simple fact that it can be traded and resold, but when Sony controls the content and prices, market forces have no way of dictating things in any legitimate way. Sure, we can vote with our dollars, not buying games or the console itself, but how long will early adopters and loyal fans continue to get the short end of the stick before something changes? I mean, in America, for example, we’re getting full-popped for the Go, whereas in the UK at the very least people are getting a few game downloads right out of the box.

And these were all the things that came to mind before I turned the thing on! Not that it made much of a difference. Put it this way, if you’ve turned on a PSP, you’ve turned on a PSP Go, save for some different intro graphics and such. The UI is pretty much the same (though effective), and everything does as you would expect if you’re a veteran of the console. Note: I did not get to try any of the online features.

Before I close, one funny thing kept happening to me. When I would slide the Go to its closed position, which was actually quite gratifying, I kept trying to navigate it by touching the screen. As an iPhone owner, this is pretty much something I’ve come to expect, especially from a premium handheld device. I kept chuckling to myself about how dumb I was, but then I realized that, wow, Sony really missed out on an opportunity to fight back at Apple, and to even steal away — something they’re already trying to do — some of the developers who have made great games using the Apple’s touch and accelerometer tech. If the Go was stepped up in terms of physical quality and added the kind of features that would make it a legit iPhone/iPod touch contender, $249 might seem like a bargain.

In the meantime, if I ever consider buying another PSP, it’s certainly going to be the Slim.