PlayStation Portable

Sony announced the PSP at a press conference ahead of E3 2003, and Ken Kutaragi called it "the Walkman of the 21st century" because of its multimedia features. Nintendo had ruled handhelds since the Game Boy, and challengers such as the Game Gear, WonderSwan and N-Gage had made little impact. The console was shown at E3 2004 with an analog stick and pledges of support from 99 companies. Battery life was its main technical challenge: Sony capped the CPU at two-thirds of its speed for the first years, and the UMD drive drained power and loaded slowly.

It launched in Japan on December 12, 2004, at ¥19,800, in North America on March 24, 2005, at $249, and in Europe on September 1, 2005, at €249, after a delay caused by demand elsewhere. It is the only handheld to use an optical disc, the UMD, for games and films. Reviewers praised its power, large screen and audio and video playback, and criticized the lack of a web browser at launch and the glossy finish, which picked up smudges.

The Nintendo DS outsold it thanks to its touchscreen and stronger third-party support, but the PSP is the best-selling handheld not made by Nintendo. Its best-selling game was Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories, and other top sellers include Vice City Stories, Gran Turismo and several Monster Hunter titles. From October 2008 the PlayStation Store offered downloadable games, and Remote Play let the handheld control a PS3 from afar. There were four major revisions: the PSP-2000, PSP-3000, PSP Go and PSP Street.

Its successor, the PlayStation Vita, launched in Japan in December 2011. PSP shipments ended in North America in January 2014, in Japan in June and in Europe by the end of that year. The PSP PlayStation Store closed in 2016; the last UMD games came out in April that year, and the last Japanese UMD factory closed in late 2016. In all, 1,370 games were released for the system between 2004 and 2016.