The thing that stops me from grabbing a PSP is the price. $250 (in the US) seems quite high for a handheld gaming device. Of course, I keep getting told it is more then that, for any extra functionality I have to spend more money. Sure, it plays MP3s off MemoryStick Duo, but only comes with a 32mb stick. It can also reconvert movies off my PC, but again it goes onto those sticks. So in order to use it for more then games, I have to spend a ton on 1gb sticks, and get an MP3 player that doesn't rival the Rio Carbon or iPod Minis in that price range. Everyone says the video is nice on it, but it's such a tiny resolution. All that video work goes to waste the second you try to play the files on anything else. And a friend commented it looks like (at least with the Spiderman 2 movie), the UMD movies are interlaced. Ick.

So that leaves the game part. I look at the shelf of consoles below my TV, and not a one was over $200 for me. All of them provide a richer experience. So why would I spend more on a handheld to get less? The DS was cheeper then them, and offers some innovative possibilities with the touch screen (Metroid on it is an FPS experience that can rival PCs due to the input, but it does take some time to get used to).

Then there are the people hacking web browsing into it. That to me seems more tedious then trying to browse on my phone. I really don't want to type out things using a control pad. If anything, a web browser would be much more useful on the DS with a touchscreen input to bring it close to a PDA experience.