Sony bids farewell to the 10-year-old PSP handheld

Sony has announced the PSP will be discontinued in Japan later this month, following a 10 year spell on the shelves and more than a few hit games during that time.

The announcement came as Sony revealed two new Super Value Packs for the PS Vita and is, presumably, a way to push sales of the new system.

While Sony hasn't explicitly said what will happen to the PSP in other markets, a discontinuation on home turf is usually a pretty good indicator of the end of the line.

The handheld games device had a good run though. It launched back in 2004 and sold around 500,000 units in the first couple of days in Japan. It proceeded to break records in the UK and became a genuine alternative to Nintendo's handheld dominance.

Two refreshes along the way saw the console become thinner and lighter and transition more towards digital downloads than Sony's proprietary Universal Media Disc. There was even the download-only PSP Go in 2008 - which was met with mixed reviews.

Now the PSP is shuffling off to the big videogame store in the sky, Sony will be looking to the recently refreshed PS Vita to carry on its handheld
campaign.

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