Demo Unit: The very slim PSP with no UMD component

A demo PSP at the Leipzig GC was totally UMDless. Syphon Filter: Logan's Shadow was playable from the unit which was very light and a lot less noisy than a retail PSP but loading times were still quite lengthy. The respective PSP is speculated to be a development unit but it certainly seems to have borrowed an idea or two from the Slim & Lite.


It’s something that gamers have been shouting out for ever since the PSP redesign rumour first shuffled into view. Now that we know for certain that the PSP slim and lite will retain the UMD drive (and let’s face it, it was always going to) we were somewhat baffled and a little amused by finding a collection of PSP’s in Sony’s Heavenly Sword booth at the Leipzig GC that were UMDless.

That’s right, as we sat down to play Syphon Filter: Logan’s Shadow we found that the reassuring weight of the PSP we were holding was absent and after a quick look, discovered that the PSP was a handheld amputee.

It was certainly very light and a good deal less noisy but from what we could tell, no quicker in the loading stakes. Seems as though these PSPs were just for demo-ing purposes so don’t anyone go getting all excited. Still, it was interesting to see what could have been.

via pocketgamer

Interesting; since it still had slow loading times, I'm guessing it had an internal UMD drive which didn't need the case (just the disc).
In fact, I don't know why we need the cases anyway; they could cut down the size by which using the disc.

Protection, is actually a smart move for such small discs. And I dont think the umd is built in, that doesnt make sense. Its probably an iso of sorts.

If it was an ISO, it should load faster than a UMD though.

That's kind of neat. But as mentioned in the article, probably just a dev unit.

Its also a dev unit, so you cant really compare it directly to a regular psp, plus the game isnt optimized yet either so its still in developmental stages, meaning it probably takes longer to load.