A new year is a great time for lists and thinking about the future. Ideally it’s a time for lists that think about the future, such as this one, which I very much enjoyed. I always enjoy these lists – what’s better than ruminating over the blank first page of a new diary? – but this one did something more for me. It made me sit up quite sharply and wish something was so.
That thing is a new Sony handheld. There have been rumours, and excellent reporting from Bloomberg, arguing that there’s one in the works, and that it will run PS5-ish games and help keep things truckin’ after the PS5 Pro. All fantastic stuff, even if some of the reporting suggests the device might not make it to market.
A solid business case is always a lovely thing to have, but that’s not the kind of stuff that particularly stirs the soul. For me, the case for a new Sony handheld is simple: Sony handhelds are always pleasantly weird, and Weird Sony is the best Sony. To put it another way: looking back on Astro Bot from last year and how Sony as an entity used that little guy to represent everything that it thinks is most loveable and engaging about itself? I always felt there was a missed opportunity there. Astro Bot is great, but why didn’t the game star an anthropomorphic PS Vita? That’s where the real love for Sony is at. (Just me?)
Let’s go back a bit. Remember the PSP? Okay, it was not hugely weird – but it was lavish, needlessly, Sony-style lavish, with that gorgeous cinematic screen and those triggers and that buzz-of-concealed-parts heft it had. It was weird to hold, at least, because you could feel all these things whirring and spinning and slotting together inside it, as if Sony’s real engineering trick was getting bumblebees to make everything work. The floating nub was weird too – great weird. I love the elastic feel of it, like pulling a magnet against its own magnetic attraction. Throw in the Go, which never looked better than it did when it appeared in the pages of Scott Pilgrim, and I’m calling it – the PSP is weird in spirit.