PSOne downloads on the PSP
Something we've known about for quite some time now is the PlayStation Portable's forthcoming ability to play games originally made for the first PlayStation -- now the details on how it's going to work are coming to light, and it's pissing me off, my friends. Why? Because you need to use the PlayStation 3 as the conduit to get the games.
So unless you're an early adopter that camped out for a week in front of a Wal-Mart and was willing to elbow and jostle your way in, or unless you're one of these fucking crazy lunatics bidding $2,500 on eBay, you're shit-out-of-luck when it comes to downloading PSOne content onto your PSP, at least until one of three things happens: A) Sony's availability of PS3s improves, dramatically; B) Early adoption is over and the price on the damn things comes down from the stratosphere or C) Sony gets its head out of its corporate ass and cuts the PS3 out of the equation.
Sony is a company that many consumers absolutely love to hate, and with good reason. They're basically the consumer electronics version of Apple -- not Apple in 2006, but Apple in 1996. The Bad Old Days. The overly proprietary, stupid, slow-to-react-to-market-trends, deserves-to-go-out-of-business Apple.
I've had a PSP since day one of availability in North America, and I've seen Sony fuck up time after time after time with this cool-ass game system: First by licensing the publication of a variety of games that weren't substantially different than their console counterparts; then by pricing UMDs more than DVD movies, essentially pushing the entire PSP-using public into ripping movies and transferring them onto Memory Stick Pro Duo cards instead (in violation of the DMCA, I might add), making promises about Mac software and not delivering, and, as exemplified in this latest debacle, making it as tough and useless to use as they can.
Obviously Microsoft is taking a page from Sony's playbook with the accursed Zune, that shit-brown iPod competitor that isn't compatible with the music services MS has been throwing its weight behind for the past couple of years. At least the PSP works with the PS3 right out of the box (presuming you update the firmware to the newest release).
Sorry if I sound angry, but I really love the PSP and I'd love to see it succeed, but Sony seems intent on doing absolutely everything it can to make it something that no one wants to own.