Video game consoles have not always been about a huge bulking mass that sits next to your television set. Handheld video games have been a great source of novelty and entertainment since the era of massively popular Tetris right up to the modern age’s Nintendo GameBoy.

Gaming has been about portability for a long time now, and with the advent of mobile phones, it become even more so. The idea of playin a quick game while you are travelling to school, college or office was enticing. But cell phones, given their limitations, obviously did not offer a great gaming experience.

With the success that the PlayStation 2 was seeing, Sony was ready to move on to the next big venture. By 2003, the hardware that went into the original PlayStation had become miniaturised to the extent that it could be fit into a tiny form factor that could be held in one’s hands. There was an opportunity here and Sony wasn’t going to let it go.

On 12 December 2004, the Sony PlayStation Portable (PSP) first went on sale in Japan, quickly selling over 2,00,000 units on the first day. The mega-hit console has gone on to have quite a few variations from that first base model and is considered an “essential commodity” for serious gamers.

Some tech specs are – The Sony PSP’s dimensions are – 6.7 ¤ 2.9 ¤ 0.9 inches, it weighs 280 grams and was launched in December 2004. It’s interface consists of Xross Media Bar. Sony PSP has a screen size of 4.3 inches and a resolution of 480×272 pixels. It has a 333 MHz ARM processor with 32 MB EDRAM. It’s battery life is 14 hours and some of the online service the Sony PSP has are PlayStation Network, RSS reader, Skype and PlayStation Store.