Sony's PSP: Kids' must-have?

If they're gamers, they'll probably think so. The games part of Sony's new PSP is fabulous, I'm hearing. "As a portable game machine, it's a peerless piece of work," says the Washington Post's tech writer Rob Pegoraro. They'll love the multiplayer capability - its "breakthrough feature" - because "it's just more fun to compete against other people. You don't get the same sublime sense of satisfaction when the car you incinerate with a hail of missiles is driven by the computer" instead of another player, Rob says. Arriving on store shelves this week, "this $250 device is Sony's answer to Nintendo's Game Boy and DS handhelds. It also represents yet another try by Sony to get into the portable-media market Apple's iPod owns." That's where it fails, both Rob and USATODAY's Ed Baig say - the media features. Movies, at $20 a pop, can't be played on any other device, and the UMD disks they come on aren't rewriteable; i.e., you can't put tunes or photos on them once you've seen the movie. Rob suggests that if you want to listen to music and view your pictures, just get an iPod Photo. Here's CNET's similar take.