2026년, 소니 PSP가 다시 주목받는 이유

Become a Member Join the thousands who have already subscribed to The Bryant Review! Membership unlocks exclusive articles , a customizable reading experience, and you won't see this message again! Subscribe Email sent! Check your inbox to complete your signup. No spam. Unsubscribe anytime. Over the past few months, I've spotted something a little odd and unexpected happening to Sony's old PlayStation Portable. There's been no corporate push, no announcement of the truly portable Sony handheld we used to hope for ( sorry, Portal ). Instead, through something far less predictable, considering it's 2026, people are just...picking it up again. Scroll through TikTok, YouTube, Reddit, and you'll start to see it. UMD drives open, those glossy Piano Black shells catching the light, the old XMB interface getting shown off with endless user-chosen themes. For a handheld that first launched in 2004, the PSP feels surprisingly present right now. The sheer amount of video edits I've seen of car meet-ups (hello, 2 Fast 2 Furious ) recorded on the PSP with the PSP camera is…well, more than I expected. It's not really about looking back. It's more that people are folding it into the kind of aesthetic that's come back around. What was in, then out, is back to being in again. What’s interesting is that this resurgence doesn’t come from a single place. It’s not just nostalgia, and it’s not just retro collecting. To me its kinda sitting at the intersection of several modern trends: burnout with always-online devices, a renewed love for early 2000s design, the rise of handheld gaming once again, and a generation encountering the PSP for the first time as something entirely new. In many ways, the PSP hasn't changed at all. But the world around it has. Sony's first handheld feels more relevant now than it has in years. So just for fun, I wanted to explore a few reasons why I've been seeing my favorite handheld (this piece of hardware design I love so much) popping up everywhere lately. ℹ️ Let the record show this isn’t definitive, or even fact. It’s just where I think the current resurgence might be coming from. Then again, it might also just be an excuse to write about the PSP again. I’ve been having a lot of fun with it lately, so I’ll take any reason. The "Dumb Device" Appeal Pick up a PSP in 2026 and one of the first things that stands out isn't what it can do, it's what it doesn't do. There are no notifications waiting. No feeds to check. No background updates before you play. Certainly no age verification checks that 2026 is bringing in with all the force of 1984. Nothing is sending metrics back to track your activity. You turn it on, land in that familiar XMB menu, and that's it. Whatever happens next is entirely up to you. That kind of experience feels completely out of place now. Modern devices are built to compete for attention, designed to keep your eyes on the screen as long as humanly possible so companies can monetize that engagement. Constantly nudging, refreshing, suggesting. Even games themselves often feel tied into that loop: daily rewards, seasonal content, endless progression systems engineered to keep you coming back. Everyone wants that Fortnite money ( which has led Sony down many failed online multiplayer rabbit holes these past couple years ). The PSP exists outside all of that. It doesn't ask anything from you beyond the moment you're already in, the game you're playing or the movie you're about to watch. And that's part of the appeal. There's a growing fatigue around always-online everything, where even downtime starts to feel structured. I've noticed more people investing in Kindles, Kobos, BOOX devices lately, trying to slow their doom-scrolling. Offline digital audio players (DAPs) have seen a similar resurgence, people wanting access to their music without their phone dragging their eyes away. It sounds a bit dramatic, I know. In that context, the PSP feels less like old tech and more like the tiniest act of resistance. Just like a dedicated e-reader, or music player. You can have one device per hobby. With the PSP you pick a game, you play it, and when you're done, you stop. Nothing follows you out. Even the slight friction works in its favor. Swapping UMDs or loading up an SD card, waiting through load times, navigating that simple menu: it all slows things down just enough to feel deliberate. There's no infinite library one tap away, no endless scrolling through options you'll never commit to. Just what you've got in front of you. It's a quieter way to play. And right now, that's exactly what some people are looking for. More Than a Console The PSP was never just about games, and that’s a big part of why it feels so easy to come back to now. Long before everything merged into the smartphone, this was already trying to be an all-in-one portable. You could load it up with MP3s, drop videos onto a Memory Stick, even carry around full movies on UMD. None of it was perfect: watching films on that small screen today feels a little rough around the edges (that resolution isn’t going to amaze you), but that’s almost beside the point. It worked, and more importantly, it worked on your terms . Using it now has a very different feel compared to modern devices. Listening to music on the PSP means choosing what you actually want to hear ahead of time. No recommendations, no autoplay, and no algorithm. Just a folder of tracks you picked yourself, playing start to finish. Seeing the PSP being used as a music player has become so common now. And I love to see it! It’s the same with video. Whether it’s converted files or those old UMD movies, there’s a kind of intentionality to it all. You’re not browsing a library of endless options, you’re watching something because you decided to put it there. That tiny shift, owning the experience instead of being fed it goes a long way with how I view the internet in 2026. I think that others might be feeling the same way. ℹ️ I tried to find out exactly how many films were released on the UMD format, but there doesn't seem to be a definitive number agreed on in a number of sites. So I'd hazard there's anywhere from 1,300 to 1,500 in total. More than enough offline movies to be watched! In a strange way, the limitations are what make it work. The screen isn’t amazing, the storage is finite, and getting media onto the device takes a bit of effort. But all of that creates a boundary. It keeps the experience contained, focused, and (again crucially) offline. That’s what ties it back to the broader appeal. Music, films, even photos: it all exists in a space that isn’t constantly trying to pull your attention somewhere else. It’s not just a handheld. It’s a self-contained beautifully designed little bubble, and for a lot of people right now, that’s exactly the point. Sign up for The Bryant Review Technology for Human Beings. Here, we tell stories and focus on good things. Free software, the Fediverse, and other things that don't suck. Subscribe Email sent! Check your inbox to complete your signup. No spam. Unsubscribe anytime. The Handheld Renaissance The PSP's return hasn't happened in isolation. It's part of something wider that's been building for a few years now, a steady shift back toward playing games in your hands. Portable gaming never fully went away, but it did change. For a long time, it felt like it had been absorbed into phones; reduced to quick sessions and touchscreen controls. Dedicated handhelds became niche, or very much just seen as a Nintendo thing, or both. Then, gradually, things started swinging back. Devices like the Steam Deck, Switch and especially the wave of smaller retro handhelds (of which I have now reviewed many !) have made it feel normal again to have a portable device just for games. Maybe music too. Not a phone, not a multipurpose screen, just something focused. Something you pick up with intent. Small enough to take along for your day-to-day. Once that door opens, the PSP starts to m