The Sony PlayStation Portable holds a special place in many gamers’ hearts, mine included.
Commonly referred to as the PSP, the handheld device was Sony’s first big step into mobile gaming. The PSP was unveiled at E3 2004, and was released in Japan in December that year. On 6 September 2007 Sony released the PSP-2000, which was 33% lighter and 19% slimmer than its predecessor.
Besides the unit being sold with a Sony stamp on it, the PSP also introduced the Universal Media Disc (UMD) – a storage device which could hold 1.8GB of data.
The UMD was paired with a Memory Stick Pro Duo, which was used to store files and games downloaded from the PlayStation Store.
Despite the UMD’s failure to gain traction as a format – and the ill-conceived PSP variants such as the PSP Go – the PlayStation Portable brought the technological edge and higher-def graphics that were lacking from Nintendo’s offerings at the time.
After selling roughly 80 million units, Sony announced that it would be discontinuing the PSP by the end of 2014.
Cue the nostalgia
The handheld console had some great games – these are the ones which sold the most copies and scored the highest among critics.
Bestselling PSP Games
- Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories – 7.6 million copies
- Monster Hunter: Freedom Unite – 5.4 million copies
- Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories – 4.9 million copies
- Monster Hunter: Freedom 3 – 4.8 million copies
- Daxter – 4.4 million copies
- Ratchet & Clank: Size Matters – 3.7 million copies
- Midnight Club 3: DUB Edition – 3.6 million copies
- God of War: Chains of Olympus – 3.1 million copies
- Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII – 3.1 million copies
- Medal of Honor: Heroes – 2.62 million copies
Highest Rated Games according to Metacritic.com
- God of War: Chains of Olympus – 91
- Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars – 90
- Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 Portable – 89
- Lumines – 89
- Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker – 89
- Wipeout Pure – 88
- Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lion – 88
- Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories – 88
- OMG-Z – 88
- Tekken: Dark Resurrection – 88
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A lot of negativity in the comments below… I share the sentiment of the author of this article. PSP was my third handheld (after the gba and DS), and now that I own a 3ds and psvita (and ipad…), the PSP is still my prefered handheld to date. It wasn’t perfect, but the library of games on it is amazing and it felt and still feels like a small ps2 in your hands. And even though there are better ports of ps2 games on vita (jak & daxter, ratchet & clank, FFX, Persona 4), the vita just never felt as a viable handheld to me because of the lack of games other than indie titles