If we're really getting a new PlayStation handheld, let it come from the weird Sony that made the PS Vita
Run don't walk, man.
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.
Then there's the Vita, of course, which was weird in spirit and in every other way. Here was a handheld I properly loved. The rear touchscreen, the floating triggers, the bizarre collection of software, each of which was accessed by tapping a magical little bubble on the UI. The Vita is that rear touchscreen and those triggers, but it's also Gravity Rush, a game that made it to home consoles but deserves in its soul to be trapped on a bizarre device you can use on the bus. A great screen and a needlessly lavish approach once again, but the Vita clearly came of age in an era when the future was uncertain. Which bets to make? How about all of them, all of them at once? Weird Sony rides again.
What I love about this stuff, well there's two things. For one it ties into Sony's history of making not just tech but deliriously cool gadgets. Sony marketed the PSP as the Walkman for the next century, and that didn't work out. But there's a straight line from the Walkman to the PSP anyway. It's a brilliant bit of thinking that takes something that seemed fixed in place - proper 3D under-the-telly-console-games - and let you ramble around with it, and the stylings were needlessly cool. The Walkman's orange button! The floating nub!
I could talk about this stuff for hours, but I won't. What I will say is: A) it wasn't just Walkmen that made me love Sony handheld gadgets and B) I am permanently in the market for a Sony Nex 7 mirrorless camera at a sane price. It's the way the lenses clip on. Hit me up. Anyway, point being, making cool stuff that fits in a coat pocket is a proud lineage here.
The other thing I love about this stuff? It's that it's genuinely loveable in the first place. I am not going to be able to break this down, but for me, the PSP and particularly the Vita are loveable in a way that the PS1 is but the PS2 isn't quite. I really like the PS2, but the PS1 was a punt into the abyss, and it had all these bizarre quirks, not all of them intentional, like the upside-down laser thing. (Granted, few people found that loveable at the time.) The oddness of it inspired oddness from designers, who made stuff like Vib-Ribbon and Ape Escape, and for that I will always salute them.
Odd things, quirky things, things that represent not just ingenuity but a real risk, that have strange elements that make them feel like they're properly touched by human imagination, those things will always inspire love.
And so. I guess what I'm saying is that it will be nice if Sony makes a new handheld that runs PS5 type games, but what would be really cool is if they make a new handheld that has a bunch of bizarre inputs that developers tie themselves into pretzels trying to make the most of, and if it has stuff like Treasure Park on it, which feels like it was made to cater to a bizarre internal whim. It would be cool if you pick the device up and feel like you'll never quite get your head around what it was intended for, and what it can do and can't do. All of that and a new Metal Gear Acid instalment and I'm set, basically. And do ping me if you're selling a Nex 7.