In recent months, many have expressed the opinion that Sony's PSP is a failure. There are certainly some valid reasons to criticize the company's decisions over the last few years — but Sony is still in a powerful position with many opportunities to correct their mistakes.

Since the release of the Game Boy in 1989, many companies have tried unsuccessfully to challenge Nintendo's control over the handheld market. Atari, Sega, SNK, and Nokia each sold millions of handhelds but did little more than create a ripple in Nintendo's market share.

As of September 2006, Sony sold 22.94 million PSPs worldwide. The PSP is the first to successfully compete against Nintendo's handhelds by selling more than 10 million units. These are impressive figures, especially considering it is Sony's introduction to the handheld market.

Unfortunately, Sony appears to have lost sight of what makes the PSP a strong competitor. There are several things that could be done to increase sales and further differentiate the PSP from the competition.

• UMD movies were originally cheaper than most DVDs, which made them more appealing. By mid-2006, the price of UMD movies had increased with most titles priced between $20-25. It is difficult to justify spending more for a UMD movie than a DVD, especially since a UMD movie can only be played on a PSP. Lower the price of UMD movies, and more will be sold.
  
  
• Sony has completely missed the boat by not offering substantial downloadable content for the PSP. Downloads are available for all of the recent consoles. The PSP can easily handle this feature, and there is no justification for Sony's lack of downloadable PSP content.
  
  
• With its networking abilities and power, the PSP is ideal for playing many titles from the vast library of original PlayStation games. Sony promised downloadable PSOne games as a feature, but over a year later this still was not available. On December 5, 2006, Sony announced their PSOne-to-PSP download options, but the service requires a PlayStation 3. There is no way at the time of this article to legitimately download PSOne games without a PS3. PSP owners want to play the older games without purchasing a PS3, and this is a missed revenue opportunity for Sony to capitalize on their extensive library and intellectual property.
  
  
• Soon after its release, many homebrew applications appeared on the PSP that took advantage of the device's power and features. Emulators, productivity apps, games, and other ports of open source applications appeared on hundreds of websites. Small developers expressed obvious interest in the PSP, but Sony has tried to squash homebrew by blocking unofficial development with each new version of the PSP firmware. Sony would be wise to pay attention to public interest and encourage homebrew with an "official" small developer program. The best of privately developed applications could be made available by Sony as purchased downloads or compilation disks. A similar program was available for the original PlayStation, and Nintendo currently offers one for the Wii.
  
  
• One of the best homebrew applications is PSPRadio, a jukebox that also plays internet radio streams using the PSP's WiFi connection. PSPRadio is a perfect example of a private developer applying the PSP's hardware abilities to create features not available for other handhelds and most portable music players. Sony should either create their own PSP internet radio software or purchase PSPRadio from the developer. The ability to listen to internet radio is a natural match for the PSP, and would further highlight the PSP's abilities over the competition.
  
  
• Sony needs to change their advertising to emphasize the PSP's unique features. Instead, most commercials over the last few years have focused on the "coolness" factor. Since a large segment of portable gaming users are adults, more advertising should be targeted to that audience.

These are just a few obvious suggestions, all with a high probability of success. It's easy to understand why some people are disappointed with the PSP, since there are so many squandered possibilities with the device. It is still too early to write off the PSP as a failure, but only if Sony gets their act together and develops the handheld to its potential.