Sorry Go!Messenger fans; the seven of you just aren’t enough to keep BT’s PSP messaging service going, so on March 31st it’s going to be shut down. Sony told the PlayStation forums that “Although Go!Messenger brought innovative communications features to the PSP community, the service has not developed the base of users that we were hoping for.”
Go!Messenger was (and for the moment still is) a free IM , VoIP and video chat program for the PSP. Go!Messenger users can use it to chat remotely with other PSP owners as well as those that download the free PC software.
Sony elaborated on its decision, explaining “Although it proved a popular concept, achieving a significant number of registrations, it didn’t gain the number of regular users that BT and SCEE were aiming for.”
It’s not hard to see why the theory proved more appealing than the practise. Sending text IMs from a handheld that has no keyboard is seldom convenient. The VoIP and video chat functions could have made up for that, but the lack of users who share the necessary software is inevitably going to be major dampener. You can even use Skype on PSP – giving you the same VoIP functionality, but considerably more people to contact.
Sony assured PSP Go!Cam owners that their peripherals still have the photo and video recording functionality and that future products would take advantage of the hardware.
Out now | £Free | Go!Messenger (via Eurogamer)
