The PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Portable are like two peas in a pod, sharing and sharing alike all the way down to the common XMB menu -- these two were made for each other. We connected up our PSP to the final retail PS3 (updated to version x1.10) to see how well the duo worked together.

Remote Play

The highly-unexpected PS3-to-PSP Remote Play feature is unfortunately not yet active at this time -- the feature is listed on the PS3 menu and is functional, but because the PSP will not be updated to the necessary v3.0 until later this month, the PSP cannot reciprocate the feature. We did notice a few things about the feature, however. For one, the set-up seems to have some manual functionality to it, as the PS3 asks for the PSP's SSID (which should be displayed on the PSP once it's updated to v3.0 -- we don't know yet how long this SSID will be.) The menu will not let us get past that, but assumedly, from here the PS3 and PSP would begin auto-searching for each other and then it'd go from there. On the Remote Play feature set, we were able to test the mode and were a little surprised (and somewhat disappointed) that the PS3 actually has to kick out of HD mode to 480p when it switches to Remote Play -- it'll take 1080p video and stream it to your PSP, but the PS3 has to take time resetting itself (and your monitor) for the mode.

Media Playback

The PlayStation 3 will mount just about any time of USB drive and, so long as it has the proper directory structure, will take its media from that system. PSP mounts as a USB Memory Stick device -- nothing special, but since PSP folders are the same as PS3 folders, your PSP Memory Stick should be pre-formatted out of the box.

One of the first things you'll notice is that the PSP itself is recognized as a PSP -- the menu will say PSP, will list a PSP icon, and will even pull the name of your PSP as the media device you are using (for example, our Japanese Ceramic White PSP showed up as "Gandalf", as we had cleverly named it Gandalf the White way back when we bought the system.) Your media will show up in its proper place from the PSP, with Music, Video and Photos loading from the PSP to PS3 easy enough. In a nice extra feature, you can tap triangle and browse a full media structure on your PSP Memory Stick -- you actually see what folders files are stored in and can see not only the currently-chosen media type but also whatever media type is available to check out.

File loading is as fast as your Memory Stick allows, and in our tests, there was no delay at all loading tunes and videos off a connected PSP -- it all runs about as fast as a PlayStation Portable does. You also have the option of copying media from here, either from the PSP to PS3 or the other way around. (This same option is available for all USB connections.)

One of the disappointments so far with PS3 media playback: no thumbnails of most media types unless it's on the HDD. Pictures, it does fine with -- it loads thumbnails of your pictures right away. Video, however, will neither load the standard bitmap thumbnail (in the old MP_ROOT folder) or auto-generate a running thumbnail from the video itself. (In an aside, it seems that Sony was incorrect in stating video thumbnails were "realtime" on the menu when running from the hard disc -- instead, the PS3 generates and stores a thumbnail video for the file, similar to how the PSP used a THM file for its thumbnails.) And most surprising of all, Music folders did not display their album thumbnail, a common feature on media players -- it works on PSP, but it doesn't work yet on PS3. (Note that this may simply be a feature to be added later, as even CDs ripped and auto-labeled for Album/Artist/Song do not include album art.)

On a final couple of notes, the PS3 does not have the ability to modify or browse PSP saves -- game saves and PSP applications do not appear anywhere on the PS3 front-end when reading from a PSP unit (or loading a Memory Stick). You also cannot use the built-in Memory Stick formatter to format a stick on PSP -- you must take out the Memory Stick and plug it into either the Memory Stick slot (with adapter for the smaller Memory Stick Duo format) or USB Memory Stick device. Signs also appears to point to a lack of the PS3 to play downloaded games off of anything but PS3's internal hard disc -- when we formatted our Memory Stick for PS3, it did not have a GAMES folder as on PSP, although it did create a PS3 root folder and an "Updates" folder for downloading PS3 updates from the web and loading them onto PS3 (if you can't connect your PS3 up to a network connection.) One bit of good news is that the PS3 can offload game saves -- PS3, PS2, or PS1 -- to the PSP's Memory Stick, making saves perfectly portable (so long as they're not locked saves, as a few PS3 saves will be.)

Gameplay Cross-Play

There is not yet a PS3 game out yet that uses the PSP for any purpose -- the first should be Formula One (although