Jupiter - PSP Love With Reservations

European analyst Ian Fogg posts at the Jupiter Analyst Weblogs about his new love, the Sony PSP. He likes the gameplay but wonders about the device's "portability" as well as problems playing multiplayer against people with the same game but from a different region (i.e. U.S., Europe, Japan). Fogg concludes:

For Sony, this is part of the bigger dilemma: how to encourage word of mouth sales without damaging the core PSP business model. Technical reasons aside, I see no business value to Sony of allowing other region games to be played and at the same time preventing cross-region multiplayer. Sony should either open up game region features entirely or move to conventional region coding. This in-between approach benefits no one.