Sony makes up for the lack of analog input by including a wide touchpad. The phone also has a touchscreen, although that’s to be expected these days. The gadget is said to be powered by a 1GHz Qualcomm MSM8655 processor. That’s as powerful as the Apple A4 chip on the iPhone and iPad, three times more powerful than the current PSP and more than twice as powerful as the 3DS; then again Nintendo isn’t a cutting edge tech sort of company nowadays. The PlayStation Phone is also said to have 512MB RAM, 1GB of ROM and eschews Memory Stick support for MicroSD cards.

There’s a decent chance that the phone will be running the upcoming Android 3.0, and have an online store for games. No word on price and release date yet, but if I were a betting man I’d say that it’s going to be released in 2011 and it’s going to be expensive. It is a phone too, don’t forget that.

Are you liking what you’re seeing so far? Bear in mind that these are pictures of a prototype. Personally both of my fears unfortunately came true – this is most likely a download-only platform, and its dual nature means it’s going to be pricey. Still, I’m interested in seeing how Sony handles the software side of things, even if I’m probably not going to get this device.

[via Engadget]

Meh. This feels off, especially since E3 just came and went and Sony didn’t mention anything about a new PSP, which would have stolen some of the attention that the 3DS got. We’ll know sooner or later. Whatever the case, I’m pretty sure it looks nothing like this monstrosity:

While we’re still free to imagine, what would you like to see in a new PSP? I’d like support for more video and audio files, and re-released PS2 games, kinda like what Sony is doing with PS1 games now. I want to play Front Mission 5 dammit.

[via The Sixth Axis]

A representative of Logitech’s UK office told CVG that they’re not aware of any such product, so “… it may be something the US office is working on.” If this UMD drive does come out, let’s hope that Logitech (or Sony) includes software that can rip UMDs so that people can transfer their UMD-based games to the PSP Go’s memory. Either that or sell it dirt cheap. Otherwise this is a slap in the face of everyone who bought a PSP Go.

If and when this device is released and all it does it play UMDs, it will be an implicit admission that the PSP Go is a crippled and expensive joke of a device.  You know Sony, if you really want to go backasswards, you’d be better off bringing back PS2 software emulation on the PS3.

[via Exophase]

The game uses our expectations and past experience with RPGs and throws all of that – the 8-bit graphics, character portraits in dialogues, conventional plots, grinding, item buying, dialogue etc – in fast forward, which makes sense because if you’re not going to see anything new anyway, might as well zip through to the end right? And PerLee mentions repeatedly in his preview that the game is consistently funny and self-aware, and that’s a huge plus for me. Here’s a video of the gameplay from the Japanese release of the game. The video has spoilers (especially if you can read Japanese) towards the end but it also shows the 30 second system at work pretty well so… watch at least the first 3 minutes, then stop if you want.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

As you saw in the video the 30-second time limit can be extended in exchange for money, but the whole thing was still freakin frantic. Half-Minute Hero isn’t just an RPG; The RPG part is just one of the 4 gameplay modes in the game. There’s also a shmup, a survival/king of the hill mode and even an RTS (!) mode, with each mode assigned to a stereotypical character. The hero gets the RPG mode, a princess is in the shoot ‘em up, a knight defends a mage in the king of the hill mode, and an evil boss is the character in the RTS mode. Here’s a shaky and quite awkward interview by Unit of True Game Headz with Jimmy Soga of XSEED.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

This and Persona may just be the ones that will make me use my PSP again. Hopefully the humor is really present throughout the game. You can pre-order Half-Minute Hero at Amazon for $28 (USD). Check out Destructoid for the full article for more info.

Sony isn’t treating everyone like pirates in this case. As Loot Ninja explains, the company is just preserving whatever “value” the achievement (it is what it is) system has. Because everyone in the known universe knows that the PSP has been haXX0r’d to death and beyond, Sony is afraid that a Trophy system on the PSP will only be hacked as well, and if so people will be able to unlock all the Trophies without actually fulfilling the requirements. That of course will devalue the poor system. Sad.

What’s even more sad for Sony is that the ChickHEN custom firmware has been polished for end users, and is now on the Internets, officially ending the reign of the homebrew- and pirate-free PSP 3000.

That said, Sony’s entry into the fray seems a little anemic at first glance. From what I can tell from this translated page on Sony’s Japanese website, the camera will take 640×480 and 480×272 still pictures as well as 480×272 motion jpeg clips at 30 fps, but only up to 15 seconds of recording. With those specs, I’m not sure where the “effective” 1.3 megapixel resolution that’s also mentioned will come into play.

In addition, it looks like it will ship with an application which allows for slide shows and adding special effects to pictures and for creating animations. No mention is made of support for live video feeds (i.e. ‘webcam’) capability.

The camera should hit the streets in Japan on November 2 for 5,000 yen (appx $44 USD), but there’s no announced date or price for US or European launches.

[via CNet Asia]