The Handheld Revolution · 1989–present
Sony PSP
PlayStation Portable
Sought After?
Growing — it's aging into "retro" status and its multimedia features (movies on UMD, homebrew potential) give it a distinct collector niche.
Downsides
The proprietary UMD disc format was slow-loading and prone to skipping if the tiny discs got scratched; battery life was mediocre for a system with such power draw.
Why It Faded
Outsold nearly 2-to-1 by the Nintendo DS; succeeded by the PS Vita, which itself struggled against mobile gaming's rise.
Trivia
The PSP was powerful enough to run near-console-quality games like God of War: Chains of Olympus, a genuine technical achievement for a battery-powered handheld in 2008.