Sony’s PSP Library Deserves Better Treatment

Broken Destiny, Now with Missing Features!

PS5 screenshot taken by the author.

Until this morning, I had totally forgotten about 2009’s Soulcalibur: Broken Destiny. It came back into my personal realm thanks to the magic of the PlayStation Plus Premium classics catalog, a haphazardly updated collection of older games that you can either access through a subscription or a direct purchase. The game was quietly uploaded to the service a few weeks ago, and it’s also available as a direct purchase for PS4 or PS5 owners.

Remember the PSP AKA the PlayStation Portable? It released at the height of Sony’s PS2 popularity in 2004/05 (depending on your territory), and it was a great little machine. It had a single analog nub alongside the classic PlayStation control layout, and its own tiny optical disc drive using the “UMD” format, which could hold either game data or a feature film. UMD was more or less tiny DVD shoved into an awkward cartridge, and although it’s a nightmare from a sustainability perspective due to all the extra plastic, it was a sound way to make optical discs portable while removing some of the durability drawbacks.

With a name like “PlayStation Portable,” Sony claimed that they’d offer full sized console experiences with the machine in spite of its low power hardware and limited battery life thanks to the spinning…