I couldn't stomach the cost. At the time you could get a PS2 for the same or less money, do I could never justify a PSP. Nowadays I'm not broke so maybe I could though, but that ingrained mental block of "too expensive" is hard to get past
This was more than a small part due to the calculation that early models were more likely to be hacked and I'd save myself a lot of money emulating snes games instead of buying new ones...