The Sony PSP is a great piece of technology. It’s a fun platform and in 2007, had a wonderful year for producing hit titles that I really wanted to play, including Silent Hill: Origins, Jeanne d’Arc, Disgaea: Afternoon of Darkness, and so on.

Trouble is, here we are a year later and the games I’m still playing most on PSP are: Silent Hill: Origins, Jeanne d’Arc and Disgaea: Afternoon of Darkness. And it’s not because I haven’t acquired other PSP games in the meantime. It’s just been a really down year for PSP.

For reasons that defy logic, developers seem to be making a bee-line toward the retro Nintendo DS, rather than a more modern portable gaming system. Weird.

But I do think the answer is for Sony to shake things up and retire the Sony PSP sooner rather than later. With Apple challenging the gaming market with its recent re-visioning for the iPod Touch/iPhone as something that can handle gaming as well as music, it’s time for Sony to reinvent the PSP.

Forget about making a Sony PSP resemble a controller for the kind of system one finds resting on their TV stand and really reshape the whole deal.

Here’s some suggestions for the PSP 2:

1) Drop the optical drive. For memory, go with flash media and a system that can either sell games via flash media or via downloads.

2) Employ a superior touch-screen technology, perhaps with handwriting recognition built-in. Let’s face it, Nintendo DS predicted the touch-screen trend and the iPod Touch confirms this new direction. Go with the flow and do ‘em one better with the handwriting recognition.

3) Make it thinner, lighter, and nearly all touch-screen. This is something Apple did well; follow the trend and improve upon it with better refresh rates, and higher resolution.

4) Leapfrog the competition by making Sony PSP2 the first portable 1080p gaming system.

5) Keep the cost of games low. Invite more indy developers by allowing lower-tech games to be made available at sub-$20 prices, and save the $30-$40 price points for premium games.

6) Most of all, make the system easy to develop for – for once!