E3 2017: 7 Reasons Sony Must Release A New PSP
5. Backwards Compatibility Could Reel In Past Owners
One of the best decisions Nintendo made when building both the Game Boy Advance, the Advance SP and the Nintendo DS, was to offer backwards compatibility with prior hardware.
All those players who'd bought Game Boy and Game Boy Colour games could still play those titles despite a 12 year gap with the original system and a 3 year difference between the Colour and Advance. Granted, the DS couldn't play original Game Boy/Colour games but it retained the ability to play GBA games.
Sony had a similar policy with their home systems right the way through to the first model of the PlayStation 3, which could play thousands of games thanks to its compatibility with both the original PlayStation and the PS2. This philosophy never carried into their PSP line-up, however.
If a new PSP offered the optical drive, game card compatibility AND the ability to have large capacity games on-the-go, it'd sell brilliantly and have a ready-made games library to boot.