Kotaku has what they believe are the final specs for the purported upcoming revision of the PSP. It is not going to be a “PSP 2″ or anything like that, but a new form factor revision using the same internal hardware (like Nintendo’s DS Lite vs. DS).
Some of the features they report are:
- A “much slimmer design” thanks to a thinner, more power efficient LCD monitor (and hopefully one that isn’t so prone to dead pixels)
- Battery life is supposed to last up to”four times longer” than the original PSP
- A faster UMD drive will help increase game load times (not sure how they manage to keep the battery efficiency so high)
- Will come with 8GB of internal memory (currently a Memory Stick Pro Duo costs about $150-170 itself)
- NEW BUTTON DESIGNS!!! The stupid cross pad will be replaced by something more like the DualShock design, meaning that fighting games will actually be POSSIBLE to play. And I hope the useless analog button gets reworked as well
Sony is aiming for a $170 price point, which makes it a direct replacement of the current PSP.
The speculated release date is in the August-September range, but knowing Sony I think November-December would be a safer bet.
[...] of the rumored changes are to be found, so unfortunately that means we get the same crappy analog stick and crosspad. [...]