There was good reason for Sony to be concerned; skeptical journalists would have seen through the artifice it had planned. The debut of its PlayStation Portable (PSP) was to be a carefully stage-managed event, starting with the presentation of a supposedly working prototype of the device that appeared to be physically larger than the product Sony promised to deliver. Compounding the intrigue, Sony would never actually show the prototype playing a game; instead, it would only be used to show six or seven minutes worth of pre-recorded music video and movie trailer content. Finally, key developer Electronic Arts would present upcoming software on a large video screen - rather than on the prototype - and precede its showing with an unusually legalistic disclaimer: the audience would be watching a video capture from a PC emulating "early specifications that Sony released in their public statements about the PlayStation Portable."

The quote seemed to confirm what developers had been whispering for days if not weeks before the event: as of May 2004, Sony hadn't finished the device they were supposed to be manufacturing for a huge fourth-quarter 2004 Japanese launch, and no games were really ready, either. Only days earlier, The Wall Street Journal had reported that key game developer Square Enix - minority-owned by Sony - was "still not sure what Sony wants to do with [the PSP] - that's a problem[,]" and didn't know whether PSP would "be a game machine or a Video Walkman[.]" Consequently, Square Enix's contribution to the PSP press conference was merely footage from a straight-to-video movie it planned to release. As the United States release date of the PSP had already slipped to 2005, even members of Sony's hand-picked friendly audience began to wonder when and how the company actually intended to sell its new device. If PSP was to be the "Walkman of the Future," some began to suspect that the future wasn't about to start any time soon.

Many observers hoped that Sony would leak additional details on one of the three official days of the E3 show, but it didn't. A small, roped-off section of Sony's booth allowed people to stand in line to photograph or touch actual-sized prototype PSP shells, which were wired to display Evanescence music videos, the Spiderman 2 movie trailer, and pre-recorded game footage. Three kiosks, rumored to be PSP casings wired to PC emulation hardware, displayed modestly interactive game demonstrations. The Sony representative on the floor would not confirm whether the prototype PSPs were actually running the games they were showing, or whether they had working UMD discs inside. After extended probing, two noted journalists claimed that the only "real" prototype at the show was a larger-sized unit being carried in the jacket pocket of Sony COO and PlayStation creator Ken Kutaragi, a claim we could not independently verify.

More importantly, Sony refused to disclose at E3 two critical facts regarding the new platform: its price and actual battery life. Though developers have been led to believe the PSP will launch at a price point between $249 and $299, one Sony executive previously went on record with a 48,000 yen price estimate - translating to approximately $420 U.S. or 350 Euros. Sony representatives at E3 would only say that the company was waiting to see what component prices looked like closer to the unit's release, and that the PSP's battery might range in performance "comparable to portable DVD players" at "two and a half hours," and music players at "approximately eight hours."

Finally, as we discovered at the show, the weakest link in the PSP's chain of Walkman appeal is its utility as a music player: you can't record on its discs, only on Memory Stick Duo Pro flash cards, which are sold separately. As of today, it's a foregone conclusion that any device based on pre-recorded discs or flash cards doesn't have a prayer of beating the iPod, and this is especially true if either medium is a proprietary new Sony format. (Recall Betamax, MiniDisc, and any number of other Sony format flops.) But those are the only media the PSP uses, so unless your favorite artist releases music on UMDs or you want to shell out for the expensive newest-generation Memory Sticks (512 Megabytes = $250 and up), the only music you'll hear on a PSP will be in the background of a game.

Wow now that is a great Rant! Keep em coming Jeremy!