With rumours of a new PSP again swirlinbg round the internets, I decided to take a brief look at what I'd like changed if a new PSP did come along.

Things that need to change

- The death of UMD

This is the one everyone goes for, but it's probably one of the biggest issues dogging PSP at the moment. People who buy the PSP are generally tech-savvy enough to grasp the concept of the downloadable game straight away, and the platform is more than capable of supporting it technically. UMD's are expensive to produce and are warming shelves the world over. Digital distribution would allow Sony to cut costs and consumer prices, and determine what they want to push marketing-wise.

- Fresh IP

Although the entire game industry is worried about being stuck in sequelitis at the moment, this problem is especially bad on the PSP. The platform has many fine games, but almost all are franchise extensions from it's bigger PS2 and PS3 cousins, and this is true even of the new big hitters Sony announced earlier this year. The console desperately needs a defining game to call it's own, in the same way the 360 has Gears and the DS has *grinds teeth* Brain Training. For this to happen developers need to see it as a viable leading platform, and that leads on to...

- Getting developers onboard

At the moment it seems developers aren't to fond of the PSP It's too advanced to support the more simplistic stuff found on DS, yet apparently not sophisticated enough to produce truly 'next-gen' stuff. What Sony really needs to do is get developers to focus on PSP and produce high-class, original ideas and less lazy PS2/Wii rehashes. There's a ton of genres left to be explored, and recent software like Resistance:Retribution and Dissidia:Final Fantasy have shown just how far the machine can be pushed technically. The key is that the software has to be tied in to the machine's strengths, just as developers had to learn to do with the DS. The PSP is more conventional, but the same lessons must be learned.

- The Firmware updates

This is one of my personal bugbears, but I know a lot of people find it annoying. The continued, often mandatory firmware updates are impossibly irritating and often do little other than put up another wall for the hackers to smash down. Sony needs to learn to build it's software competently in the the first place, and learn from the Microsoft example of only updating to add functionality, and allowing patches to be incremental rather than the need to download the whole firmware every time. The fact that you can't do anything unless you have the latest version is utterly ridiculous.

-Things that need to stay the same

- The hardware

By this I don't necessarily mean 'don't change the machine' - rumoured addons like a slider or an inbuilt camera sound intriguing and could help push the multimedia functionality. But the heart of the hardware, the processor and the GPU, were far ahead of their time originally, and still stand up well today. There's no need for a graphical or computational update, that stuff all still looks great.

- The functionality

A lot of people say that the PSP's status as a multimedia player has distracted from it's true purpose as a gaming machine, and while that may be true in terms of the way it's been marketed, I don't think that's the case in terms of anyone using it. I have plenty of other stuff to play my music and movies, but the PSP is an excellent multimedia device, with the added benefit of remote play functionality (especially good with PlayTV).

- The games

While everything that has been said about software on PSP is true, it still has some remarkably good games. Franchise extensions may not be great for the longevity, but they make for some very good games. Chains of Olympus, R&C:Size Matters, Crisis Core, there's tons of good stuff available. Though I advocate more original experiences, here's hoping upcoming games like Birth By Sleep and Dante's Inferno continue the trend.