classicswim | Well, my PSP’s pretty much fried.

First it was the start button or select button being unresponsive, then it became both buttons permanently; and now the battery is more than likely messed up.

Some of these you can *attempt to* clean manually or repair but you really shouldn’t have to screw with the inner mainframe of any device. I don’t see how this wasn’t more of a problem back in the day. While these are relics that we play, that specific device had a known reputation for being flimsy. And it was developed by Sony for millions.

”Why not buy a new one?” It will inevitably be more, if not twice as expensive as how I bought it in the first place. Who’s to say the replacement that’ll cost an arm and a leg won’t also be broken upon arrival? You’ll never know. That’s the gamble they want you to have.

This underlying problem isn’t at all exclusive to the Portable. It’s not just all the only meaningful consoles aging and dying out. No one could foresee this current exploitive grift for retro gaming and it’s gotten very bad. It’s worse than it’s ever been. It’s hobby shops and asshole eBay sellers ruining it for the entire world.

I’m seeing this game deterioration stuff happen before my eyes more and more to the point where I can’t subscribe to “physical > digital” as simply anymore. It has become a free-fall.

Emulation is becoming not just a required necessity but the only hope. The tragic thing being that will surely be manipulated, too. No matter the medium, none of our libraries are safe from irresponsibleness and greed.