E3 2017: 7 Reasons Sony Must Release A New PSP

The PSP was a great handheld. With sales either nearing or topping 80 million worldwide, it was well-received by gamers seeking a little more power in their portable gaming systems.

Sony set out to slice up the market for people gaming on the go by boasting all the features Nintendo's DS didn't. The PSP had an analogue stick, an optical drive, a gorgeous glossy wide screen and the ability to save games on a memory stick downloaded from the PlayStation Store.

However, the second Sony handheld, the PS Vita, had an estimated final sales count of 10 million worldwide. Typically anything between 9-13 million units sold is seen as a 'failure' in the gaming industry.

With E3 2017 coming in the next few weeks, Sony could really surprise everyone by announcing a new PSP. The PS4 Pro is already out, PlayStation VR is gathering speed and everyone's eyes are focused on exactly how much of Microsoft's Project Scorpio will be revealed.

Nintendo are proving that powerful portable systems can move units, with the Switch having sold more than 906,000 in its first month of sale alone. If the appetite is there in the market, what better way to steal the spotlight than by bringing out a heavyweight successor to the PSP?

There's no denying mobile gaming has changed. Phone handsets now have specifications that easy outclass most portable games systems and begin to rival PCs (albeit at a very basic level).

Aside from the ubiquitous Candy Crushes and Mobile Strikes, (which have fairly simplified graphics), gaming on mobile devices has seen some quite graphically intensive titles climb the charts. Injustice 2, Bullet Force, Micro Machines and many other racing titles besides have demonstrated HD, console-like graphical performance.

There's no stopping Sony from producing a new PSP featuring a touch screen and allows for cross-platform play with an Xperia phone. Sony did try to bridge the gap with the Xperia Play: a hybrid of phone and PSP, released in 2011. But it didn't really catch on, partly due to the constant rate of development of the Android OS and the fact the PlayStation Vita was their focus at the time.

The latest smartphone model from Sony, the Xperia X, has eschewed the slide-out PlayStation pad despite being massively powerful. A new PSP could unify the way mobile and PSP-exclusive games are sold.