Platforms, Portable Consumer Electronics, and the Making of Sony’s PSP

In an effort to account for the impact that portable technologies and informal economies (Keogh 2023; Swalwell 2021; Svelch 2018) have had on the development of gaming platforms, this paper will provide a critical, historiographical analysis of the Sony PlayStation Portable’s (2004) relationship with the legacy of consumer electronics on the one hand and the development of platform business models on the other. The paper will begin with a discussion of the political economic (Fairclough & Graham 2002), media archeologic (Huhtamo & Parikka 2011), and digital ethnographic (Barratt & Maddox 2016) theories and methods being used. Then, it will provide a political economic analysis of Sony’s relationship with the emergence of portable consumer electronics in general, focusing specifically on the role that postwar discourses of tinkering and international discourses of travel have played in imagining, mythologizing, and branding of the companies Japaneseness (Du Gay et.al 2013; Iwabuchi 1998) to western consumers and investors.