We're not sure which part of "you can buy a new, larger battery from Sony to extend your gaming time" John Koller didn't mean, but evidently we (read: the world) had it all wrong. In a recent posting from the Director, he "clarifies" things by asserting that "the new PSP will have equivalent battery life to the current PSP, about 4 to 6 hours for games and about 4 to 5 hours for UMD videos." He continues on to affirm that the new, brighter and altogether lovelier display does suck down more power, but Sony's dutiful engineers apparently managed to "reduce the power consumption of the overall system" in order to counteract that. At this point, we'll just wait for real world battery tests before believing anything.

[Via Joystiq]

Evidently fearing some outbreak of freedom and excitement, Sony has notoriously guarded its PSP's WiFi access closely, adding features such as Remote Play at a snail's pace, and keeping such obvious adds as "ad-hoc" over the internet at bay. But no longer(ish). Sony is bringing ad-hoc online multiplayer to the PSP this fall, with a firmware update to allow the portable to network over the PS3. You'll also be able to get social during gameplay, with text and voice chat in the new online mode. Additionally, the PSP is finally barging on to the PlayStation Store via WiFi, and Sony's going to kick things off with a free downloadable game, "Mainichi Issyo Portable." The best news is that this is compatible with all three PSP generations, so just because you can't afford The Screen of Awesomeness doesn't mean you're out in the cold.

[Via Joystiq]

According to a GameSpot interview with Sony's US director of hardware marketing John Koller, that new PSP-3000 screen may look a bit better... but it's going to cost you about 20 minutes of battery life. Luckily for you gamers with endless pockets out there, Koller assures that minor wrinkle will be offset because, "We're going to have the extended life battery that's still available for consumers, so we're still going to get the eight-to-ten hours out of that battery." So just to make that clear, the regular battery life will be diminished, but you can buy a new, larger battery from Sony to extend your gaming time. Got that? Good. Watch him say it for real in the video after the break.

[Via T3]

Looks like Sony wasn't foolin' when it said that the new PSP-3000 has a noticeably improved screen from the PSP-2000 -- check out this comparison shot of the new rig vs. the old. Man, our first-gen unit is starting to look like a real clunker -- anyone else feeling the need to upgrade?

[Via PSP Fanboy ]

Don't want to blow any minds here, but Sony's new and improved PSP-3000 LCD happens to actually be new and improved. According to our bestest pals over at Engadget Japan, the new screen has double the color gamut, about five times the contrast ratio and double the response time. PSP-3000... will you marry us?

[Via PSP Fanboy]

It's not like Sony could really keep this thing under wraps for much longer, but the company finally did the deed by announcing the PSP-3000 at the Leipzig Games Convention. The unit itself will look exactly like the PSP-2000, though it will feature an "improved screen that's better outside with no glare and a built-in mic." The juicy tidbits have yet to surface, but we are told to expect the new handheld in Europe for €199 ($291) on October 15th.

If dreams of a possibly redesigned PSP don't have you waiting, you're a sucker for the Madden football, and the color blue gets you going, Sony has the package for you. The Madden NFL 09 PSP Entertainment Pack includes a metallic-blue PSP, Madden NFL 09, 1GB Memory Stick Duo, In Just One Play movie on UMD (apparently they're still pressing movies on UMD), and a voucher for a free download of Beats from the PSN. It runs $199 like other PSP packs, and is available...now. Question is: who's the Jets' starting quarterback?

A certain jube808 has launched a quixotic quest to add a myriad of features to the PSP that he believes should've been there from the start, including beefed up battery life, a better control pad, and touchscreen support. Think what you will of his aims, he certainly seems to have some hardware chops, as he's got a touchscreen up and running on the handheld. So far he's just got a proof of concept keyboard, which works with a finger or a stylus, but the hope is to provide full touchscreen support for homebrew gaming. Let us know how that goes, jube. Videos are after the break.

[Thanks, Craig]

Sony, where's the justice? How could you mercilessly kill the nine month old PSP Extended Life Battery Kit -- capable of boosting the PSP's play time by up to 80% -- while UMDs continue to be the preferred method of distribution for the system's games and video content (thereby also heavily contributing to the device's juice-drain)? Worse still for Sony, why are we not surprised?

Call it off Sony, no need to throw any precious man hours into making your perennially #2 handheld into some sort of amazing featurephone hybrid, some hacker has already done it for you. Through the amazing wonders of modern thinphone technology, soldering irons and probably a bit of glue, some hacker has managed the slap a Haier touchscreen phone onto the back of his PSP -- killing the UMD drive in the process, but we'd say it was well worth it.

Only John Koller knows how serious John Koller, Sony's senior marketing manager for PSP, was when mentioning that GPS-enabled games could eventually hit the PSP, but he definitely threw it out there. Speaking about the forthcoming GPS add-on for the PlayStation Portable, Koller stated that said module "changes the dynamics of GPS but also changes the way developers think about games on PSP, because you can start integrating GPS into it." He continued on by mentioning that Sony's own first-party studios were "already looking at a number of things [involving GPS in games]," and concluded by asserting that a GPS game could land on the system as early as next year. Considering just how long we've been waiting for the add-on, we're not holding our breath on the titles.

[Via PSP Fanboy]

We got a chance to sit down with Sony Computer Entertainment of America's CEO Jack Tretton, who gave us the lowdown about a few things we've had on our minds.

PS3
On backwards compatibility: Jack explained that Sony looked at how to "not take a greater hit on production cost, without losing PlayStation's heritage ... Hardware / software for backwards compat wasn't all that expensive. ... but we're selling PS2 software to PS2 customers, and selling PS3 software to PS3 consumers." Still, Jack seems to feel like it may have been the wrong move. "I would like to have had it in there, but Sony's collective strategy determined we could afford to lose it. We've now gone down that road, and we're not going back."

On DRM and the video store: As of right now, Tretton is a firm supporter of the need to DRM content on the PlayStation platforms, and Sony believes that "the drm for a song maybe isn't as important for a movie and a game... this is way too hard a business to make money in to allow people to own multiple copies for the price of one." (That's what they all say!) "I'm all for allowing an individual consumer having the freedom to do with their content what they want," but Sony has no intention of opening its video up any more than it has to.

PSP
On drive or flash storage: Sony has "definitely thought about storage on the PSP," and understands the inevitable "march towards digital content delivery device." But in terms of a drive-based PSP, they have "nothing that's imminent." (Read: don't hold your breath.)

On how downloadable video affects the already sad state of UMD: UMD "has struggled, and it wasn't handled effectively from the beginning. ... I firmly believe in a digital model" as they're rolling out, but Sony is "still going to support UMD" as a device for movies.

What's preventing PSP software sales: Three things. Title ports from PS2 games (people don't want to buy the same title twice), and the PSP's media functions. But Jack put the most emphasis on "piracy in the hundreds of thousands of units are preventing software sales. it's a problem that affects our software sales right now."