I don't understand why there's such a widespread negative hype about the PlayStation Portable.
For example, it seems to be a common misconception that the PSP has sold very poorly and it's not all that popular. And exactly what's this based on?
As of August 2009, the PSP has sold over 55 million units worldwide. To put that in perspective, the Xbox 360 has sold 31 million units. In other words the PSP has sold almost twice as much as the Xbox 360 (which most people consider a successful and popular console).
Granted the PSP has sold rather "poorly" compared to its main (and practically only) competitor, the Nintendo DS, but that doesn't make the PSP unpopular or a commercial fiasco. Beating all the current three major home consoles (not counting the PlayStation 2) in sales is no small achievement.
It seems to me that people don't perceive PSP's success on an absolute scale, but always contrast it with the DS. It doesn't matter how massively successful the PSP might be, if it doesn't compare to the success of the DS, it doesn't matter: It's still considered "unpopular" and "selling poorly".
Another widely held notion is that vast majority of PSP games are just remakes or ports of old games. Yet if you do even a bit of browsing for PSP games, you'll notice that remakes and ports actually form a small minority of all the games made for the PSP. (As for new games which have been ported to the PSP, complaining that a game is published for the PSP and a home console at the same time is idiotic; that's like complaining that a PS3 game sucks because it was also published for the Xbox 360 and the PC.)
And yet this is also where people only compare it to the DS. Granted, maybe the DS gets more variety and more abundance of original games (and certain extremely popular game companies are making releases only for the DS), but again, in an absolute scale the PSP has quite a wide array of games. You won't be running out of good games very soon.
(Besides, what's wrong with remakes? Not every PSP owner has owned a NES/SNES nor played any of its games. Some remakes are really enjoyable, such as Final Fantasies 1 and 2, Final Fantasy Tactics and the two Star Ocean remakes. I have never played the originals, and I found the PSP versions really enjoyable.)