Sony have officially announced the PSP Go!, and as expected it’s the smaller, entirely-digital sibling to the PSP-3000. Rocking a sliding form-factor with a 3.8-inch LCD display, 16GB of onboard memory, WiFi and Bluetooth and a M2 Memory Stick Micro slot, the PSP Go! drops the UMD slot from previous versions and as such is 50-percent smaller than the original PSP and 40-percent lighter.
Videos after the cut
Sony’s new handheld gaming console, the much-rumored PSP Go, has leaked ahead of its official E3 2009 launch. Bearing quite the resemblance to the fan mockups seen during the ongoing rumors, the PSP Go will have a 3.8-inch display, 16GB of flash memory, Bluetooth (with support for headsets and wirelessly tethering cellphones) and a Memory Stick Micro card slot.
Video demo after the cut
Sony are preparing to announce the latest version of their handheld gaming system at E3 in a few days time, claims a trusted source, but will wait until August or September to launch their slimline PS3. According to the tipster – whom Ars Technica describe as having a 100-percent success rate for previous leaks – Sony’s UMD-free PSP Go will take the headlines at E3, but the company wants to shift more existing PlayStation 3 stock before announcing the new model.
Sony are tipped to be considering a digital game rental service for the PSP, supposedly having been in talks with developers since March. The company is believed to be running an online survey through TNS Interactive, that suggests various levels of subscription with new titles added potentially as soon as a month after their general release.
Rock Band Unplugged for the PSP has leaked, three weeks ahead of the game’s official release. Already to be found on popular torrent sites, the Harmonix title has already been downloaded almost fourteen thousand time according to just one metric. However, some users are reporting serious issues when playing the illegally-obtained game.
Sony are tipped to be negotiating music deals that would see the PSP gaming handheld get on-device downloads. According to unnamed sources within the music industry, Sony has been talking to “some of the major recording companies” about the prospect of offering music downloads through the PlayStation Network.
Sony are planning to extend the PlayStation Network to hardware other than the PS3, while at the same time “evolving the PS3 into a platform for web services.” The PSN currently offers games and media content to PS3 owners, but future deployments could see it available on Sony Bravia HDTVs and mobile devices like the PSP and Sony Ericsson handsets.
As gaming mods go, adding a mouse to the Sony PSP will either make perfect sense or seem just plain stupid, depending on the type of games you play and whether you do that near a table or not. Either way, it’s a neat trick to fool the PSP (the USB port of which doesn’t support USB-host) into recognizing the mouse; that’s what one gamer has done.
Video demo after the cut
Capcom have revealed their plans to introduce as many as forty new PlayStation Network titles over the next few months, comprising a selection of original PS1 titles that have been ported over to the newer Sony consoles, and PSP games now available for download. According to Capcom’s Chris Kramer, users themselves will play a part in choosing which titles will be available first.
Rumors abound when it comes to the PSP Go! Now, we have another rumor on top of the original rumor. This one says that the rumored console will be getting a high-speed card format like the Memory Stick HG-Micro rather than internal memory.
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