May 11th, 2011
By G_23

At last, Sony finally unveiled their upcoming portable, the Sony PSP, today in their E3 Press Conference in Los Angeles. This brand new handheld is set to rival the Nintendo DS, and already has a bunch of developers backing it up.

SCEA COO and President, Kaz Hirai, promised that it would "bring a modern, 3D console experience to a mobile platform," as he showed off the device, which measures in at 170 mm x 74mm x 23mm in size and 260g in weight. The Sony PSP will also be able to play music and even movies, as well as its main purpose, which is to play games. The screen size of the Sony PSP will have a 4.3in 16:9 widescreen TFT LCD screen, which will display 16.77 million colors on a 480 x 272 pixel high-res screen. Another amazing feature that the Sony PSP will have is the feature of built-in stereo speakers, as well as a headphone jack.

The mock-up PSP that was shown late last year, is somewhat different from the real thing shown at E3. For one, instead of having touch control buttons, like the Apple iPod, it will instead have raised buttons, in the traditional style of the original PlayStation, complete with a D-Pad, four main buttons (X, Circle, Square, and Triangle), L and R triggers, and the Start and Select buttons. However, there is a new button on the Sony PSP
labeled the "Home" button. What this button does may determine that the Sony PSP may be more like a PDA, like the Nokia N-Gage is, except clearly much better.

The Sony PSP will also feature many connectivity options, way more than the Game Boy Advance does right now. Not only will the Sony PSP connect to PlayStation 2 consoles and PCs with the USB 2.0 slot, it will also connect with other PSPs by supporting an 802.11b wireless LAN. Also, new software and other data can be downloaded onto a Memory Stick Pro Duo from the system itself. It will also allow for IR Remote and IrDA infared connections.

Under the hood of the Sony PSP, it supports a 333MHz PSP CPU and have a whopping 32MB of main memory and 4MB of embedded DRAM. It will also have a lithium-ion battery built in, just like the Game Boy Advance SP. The life support for the battery is different when using different types of media. It lasts for 2.5 hours when playing videos and 10 hours when playing audio. What is not determined, however, is how long the battery lasts when you just want to play games. Also, the PSP will use Sony's new Universal Media Disc, (which are really, really small discs that were shown at last year's E3) which can hold up to 1.8 GB of data.

And since this wouldn't be a Sony product without add-ons, Sony has a heck of a lot of them already planned, such as a stand, a Sony-branded IR remote controller, an external battery pack, a carry-on strap and carry case, and special PSP-branded headphones. (Because you just know that those are different from regular headphones.)

The Sony PSP is scheduled for a Hoilday 2011 launch in Japan, and US and European launches following after that in early 2011, which unfortunately scraps the former plan of releasing the Sony PSP worldwide in October 2011. Also as part of Sony's plan to sell at least 3 million units in the PSP's first year, Hirai said that Sony plans to go after the same market that they have always gone after, the 18 to 35 year old demographic.

More Sony PSP information is bound to come up soon during E3, so stay tuned to GTM to find out more.


Additional PSP Pictures