In November 2004 I posted an Auricle item entitled A 'Filling Station' Model of eLearning supplemented, in the interim, by a few additional items on podcasting etc. Into the fray now comes Sony's Play Station Portable (PSP) with which it hopes to gain back its dominant position in the portable device market, a position so cruelly taken by that usurper Apple with its iPod. So how well does their PSP device mesh with the 'filling station' model? It's no understatement to say that Sony's Walkman series of products basically created the market for personal media devices. Sony's dominant position in this arena appeared secure until in from left field came Apple with their now ubiquitous iPod. Suddenly the Walkman series of products was looking like yesterday's technology. While Apple still has a long way to go to match the total number of Walkmans sold they claim to have now passed the 10 million sales mark and with the potential market for MP3 players alone projected to rise from 36,800,000 in 2004 to 131,963,000 by 2009 then there's going to be a lot of activity and development in this portable devices arena (Source: Digitimes 16 March 2005 citing the iSuppli Consumer Platforms Topical Report - Q1 2005 Portable MP3 Players: Booming Market Looks for New Twist.
My only interest in market trends such as the above is as indicators of what people are finding genuinely useful and what technologies they are prepared to absorb into their normal patterns of life. I don't even own an iPod although I do have frequently use a much more robust and smaller flash memory based multifiunction device, i.e. MP3 playing/recording, voice recording, radio. Anyway, enough of my foibles, let's get back to the iPod and then move on to consider the relevance of the new Sony device which hasn't even been released in the UK yet, but there sure is a lot written about it 'out there'.
Let's consider for a moment some of the reasons for the iPod's and other iPod like devices phenomenal success. First, they're small, don't weigh very much and have a significant storage capacity (with flash memory based devices having less capacity but being more robust for those who like to listen whilst trying to be an athlete). Second, they can be connected to services or other sources which can then automatically or manually download new content to the device. Apple's iTunes download service is but one notable example of such a paid-for service. Whilst the Apple iTunes service constrains reuse of the content by embedding digital rights management within the download, other sources of content are DRM free, e.g.via the podcast community. Third, users can organize that content into playlists and folders that match the genres they are interested in, so they feel in control. Fourth, it's perhaps stating the obvious, but, because the iPod et al are personal audio devices people can be doing something else while they are listening. They don't have to be sitting still. They don't need a table. The moment a device, even a portable one like the 7 inch x 3 inch PSP, requires multiple senses and motor skills to be engaged then, to varying degrees, that limits the environments and other activities the user can engage in.
So there we have it, the ingredients for success are: personal; small; genuinely useful; uses up only part of your human processing power; plus lots of alternative sources for content, some paid-for, some not. It's perhaps a bit unfair to compare the PSP to the Apple iPod et al. The latter do one thing fairly well, the PSP, however, is a multifunction mutimedia device that does more than play audio, but that means it also needs to be flexible/extensible
So how does Sony's PSP match up?
First let's not kid ourselves that the PSP is meant to be just a console games machine for children. It's not. It's a ~7 inch x~3 inch handheld personal multifunction multimedia device aimed squarely at the adult market. It's got a 4.3 inch TFT display for its 16:9 widescreen 480×272 resolution graphics. It's got WiFi and USB2.0 so it's got potential network and computer connectivity. It's got a Sony Memory Stick Duo for storage of data so you can store and play your MP3s. And it can play movies. So what fantastic potential! I can see lecture rooms and University libraries throughout the world full of Sony PSPs … but wait! … what's this I don't see?
Where's the hard disk? You mean there isn't one? And what do you mean if I want to view a movie that I have to use a new type of proprietary media called Universal Media Disc (UMD is like a minature DVD with a caddy/or like a MiniDisc which holds 1.8GB of data)? Only available from guess who? of course.
So how am I going to produce my own UMD productions?
The USB connection does mean that you can connect your computer to the Sony PSP but the only read/write capability is that Memory Stick Duo … remember no hard disk. However, as standard only a measly 32MB Memory Stick is supplied. Also there's a current 4GB ceiling on Memory Sticks. And Memory Sticks ain't cheap at the equivalent of GBP 440 for 4GB, GBP 230 for 2GB, and GBP 155 for 1GB. So you ain't economically going to be storing lots of your own productions on your Memory Sticks. At these prices, the Memory Stick feature will be used for storing game status data, MP3s and static photos. For video and other perhaps other really rich media Sony wants you locked to their proprietary and highly rights protected and region coded UMD format.
With the PSP Sony's Janus head really shows through. In one face there's the part of the empire that's the innovative creator of new sexy portable technologies which appear to liberate users. In the other face there's the media interests (particularly music and film) that's concerned with rights and control.
One of the reasons Sony's began to lose it's grip of the audio device market was because of its insistence that users used its proprietary ATRAC format instead of the now ubiquitous MP3. Users were buying portable MP3 players in their droves and so it should be gratifying to find that the Sony PSP handles MP3 natively. However, that read only proprietary UMD format for video could, and should, be a big own goal for Sony. By adopting UMD and forcing users to rely on the proprietary Memory Stick, which is a relatively expensive read/write media with limited storage capacity seems to be missing a trick. If the PSP is aimed at the adult market then a games machine that can only play movies via yet another proprietary format seems, well, too limited. And as an MP3 player? Well there are many other devices that are considerably smaller and cheaper that can fulfil this function admirably.
I suppose it is possible to imagine the user on a long train or plane journey who whips out their PSP to listen to play a game (perhaps collaboratively … remember that WiFi), slip in a UMD disk (at say GBP10-20 a time) and watch a movie, or who will listen to a few MP3 files on their expensive Memory Stick storage. But watch that 3.5 hours of useful battery life; a spare battery will be a 'must have' for long journeys.
Technically, the Sony PSP appears to be a marvel … but think what could have been.
The Apple iPod et al succeeded not just because of triumph of marketing, but because it integrated relatively high capacity storage of content which the users could refresh with ease and with, arguably, relatively low cost or for free from linked services or sources. The PSP, however, is a neat device which, at the moment, appears to be based on a classical 'lock in' model. Just as the iPod et al gives users potential access to multiple Gigabytes of data Sony seems to be heading in the other direction and has chosen to seriously limit the proportion of the PSP devoted to user controlled content, specifically video-based content.
The Sony PSP is, however, just the sort of device I had in mind when I wrote my original 'Filling Station Model of eLearning' article. But, at the moment, I don't think this iteration is it, but I could be wrong:)
It isn't hard to imagine a PSP type device that does all that the current PSP does but which has significant, and relatively cheap, user-data storage capacity which can be linked to paid-for or free services and other sources. Which can act as an ebook and which uses the WiFi capability to connect and communicate with other devices as well as browse the Web (sounds a bit like a PDA or really small laptop). Now Sony could decide to do that by establishing UMD as a read/write format so suddenly users could be playing, and God forbid 'sharing', their content. But with hard disks getting smaller and of increasing capacity one wonders why they would do that. No, the absence of a hard disk and the emphasis on the Memory Stick reeks of 'control the users' dominating current thinking. So perhaps it's back to really well specified PDA or really small lightweight laptop thinking; but they don't cost the GBP ~200 of a PSP and even the smallest lightest laptop is going to be much heavier than the 280g PSP.
As a portable games device the PSP will undoubtedly succeed but it's meant to be more than that. And keep in mind the intended adult target group. Sony will either have to change its mind about its intended audience and what its PSP is meant to be. Do the spotty adolescents await?
From my current perspective, at the moment, it appears that the dead hand of digital rights management is producing devices which are like cars that can only 'fill up' with designated expensive brands of fuel from designated expensive 'filling stations' … Pity that!
