Microsoft man takes a pop at PSP

Microsoft hardware boss Robbie Bach has had a bit of a go at the PSP, criticising the device for trying to do too many things at once.

"The PSP is a reasonably successful product at the profit-and-loss level. But as a product concept, there are cautionary tales to learn from it," Bach told VentureBeat (spotted by Kotaku).

"While it is good at producing audio, it's not a good music player because it doesn't have local storage (except for flash memory slots). You can't keep your music there. It has a beautiful screen, but you can only get the video under the Universal Media Disc format. That format hasn't been successful. On a game level, it has done well. But even there, it is mostly PlayStation 2 ports. There isn't much original content." Tell us how you really feel, Robbie.

"When you do these devices, they can't be pretty good at a lot of things. They need to be great at what they do."

Bach went on to say he thinks of the PSP as a game player that also does video and music, unlike the Zune - which he feels is a more "broad-based entertainment device". "It is technically possible to do games on [Zune]," he added. "But you aren't going to see a broad gaming effort from us until we sort that through and have it figured out."