Sony drops PlayStation Portable price down to $129.99

By Adam Rosenberg February 25, 2011

There’s still most of a year to go before Sony’s powerful new handheld, the so-called Next Generation Portable, or NGP, comes to the hands of consumers. Assuming of course that the company hits its planned holiday 2011 release window, which can sometimes be an iffy thing in the tech world. Before the Sony warehouses can become filled with these handheld mini-PlayStation 3s however, they’ll first have to be emptied of older stock.

You know what that means, right? Price-slashing time! Sony will be dropping the price of its PlayStation Portable handhelds, specifically the PSP-3000 model, down from $169.99 to $129.99 starting this Sunday, according to an update from PlayStation Blog. Additionally PSP Entertainment Pack bundles, which pack in games and UMD movies with the portable gaming devices, will settle in at the new price of $159.99.

Interestingly, there is no mention at all of the PSP Go. Sony must surely have plenty of extra stock on that one. The late-model PSP offers a smaller form factor and a healthy amount of built-in flash memory, but it comes at the cost of the PSP-standard UMD drive. All content is digitally delivered to the device via the PlayStation Store. Unfortunately, the handheld came along late in the PSP’s lifespan, after many gamers had already invested in a UMD library. With no way to transfer that content onto the Go, it failed to catch on. The price also proved to be a sticking point for many, hitting the market with a $250 value. Amazon currently has the PSP Go listed for roughly $225, which is actually more expensive than both the Xbox 360 and Nintendo Wii consoles.

The PSP definitely falls short of what it might have been had a little more work been put into figuring out exactly what it should be, but there’s a solid library of games available for it. If you’re looking for a new way to game on the go and can’t stand to wait for either the NGP or Nintendo’s March-releasing 3DS, the PSP just became a whole lot more attractive an option.

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Former Digital Trends Contributor

Previously, Adam worked in the games press as a freelance writer and critic for a range of outlets, including Digital Trends…

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PlayStation Showcase teased Sony’s live service future, but I’m not impressed yet

playstation showcase live service games reveals marathon

Ahead of the May 2023 PlayStation Showcase, I wrote that the presentation needed to “elicit confidence in Sony’s future with live service.” Well, multiplayer-focused live service games did end up being a big part of the show, but I can’t say I’m that confident in them yet.
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Over the past year or so, PlayStation Studios has made it very clear that it’s trying to break into the games-as-a-service sector now that it’s perfected the single-player adventure with games like Horizon Forbidden West and God of War: Ragnarok. Unfortunately, these early live service announcements raised more concerns than hope, which isn’t a great start when it comes to establishing a new direction for PlayStation.
A live service showcase
Haven’s sci-fi PvPvE heist game Fairgame$ was the PlayStation Showcase’s opening, and honestly, it wasn’t a memorable first showing. The trailer was purely cinematic, but its shots were composed like they were live gameplay. That still feels misleading 18 years after Sony did it with Killzone 2, even if it clarified it at the start of the trailer. It also means I don’t have a good idea of how this game will be structured and when I’ll have a chance to play it. All I know is that this is an anti-capitalist game that will probably also be a heavily monetized live service experience. It wasn’t a strong show opener; at least, like all of the other titles on this list, it’s also coming to PC.

Fairgame$ was followed up by the long-awaited reveal of Helldivers 2, a sequel to an entertaining 2015 PS Plus sci-fi top-down shooter. To Helldivers 2’s credit, it had the most honest-feeling showing of these games, with a trailer that showed lots of impressive third-person action gameplay and even gave a 2023 release window. Even if its anti-capitalist undertones were a bit similar to Fairgame$, this was the style of reveal I was hoping to see from Sony’s live service announcements. Unfortunately, it was the only live service game reveal to feature any actual gameplay.
After a break from live service announcements, Bungie emerged to reveal that it was reviving Marathon as a sci-fi PvP extraction shooter. While it’s very surprising to see Marathon coming back and that Bungie is making something other than Destiny, it was a purely cinematic trailer that leaned into its techno-futuristic aesthetics -- much like Fairgame$’s reveal trailer. A dev diary released after the reveal also says that we’ll need to wait a while to learn more and see gameplay. But you can buy a $77 shirt based on this game we don’t know much about yet, though.

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