New PSP headlines Sony's Leipzig offerings
Aug 20, 2008
Facing an onslaught from the Xbox 360 and Wii, and stiff portable competition from the Nintendo DS and Iphone, Sony fired off a barrage of surprise announcements at this week's Leipzig Games Convention in Germany. Top of the list was a redesign of its PSP portable platform, but a new PlayStation 3 model and a keyboard controller are also in the works.
The PSP-3000, which is the second redesign since the PSP launched in 2005, sports a new integrated microphone, while a new PS button replaces the old Home key, matching the branding of its bigger brother the PlayStation 3. The microphone will be used for the machine's Skype voice-over-IP telephony application, and should allow for voice chat in online multiplayer games.
Leipzig also brought news of yet another entry in Sony's long, long list of PlayStation 3 hardware configurations: it'll hit US stores in November, sporting with a gargantuan 160 GB hard drive, by far the largest in the range so far. It'll retail for $499.99, bundled with a copy of the excellent Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, a voucher to download PAIN from the PlayStation Network, and the ubiquitous DualShock 3 rumble-enabled controller. No official word yet on whether this new top-of-the-line configuration will be backwards-compatible with earlier PlayStation models, but if the scuttlebutt is to be believed, probably not.
Lastly, if you're fed up with struggling with the PlayStation 3's clumsy on-screen keyboard, there's light at the end of the tunnel. Sony also unveiled a keyboard attachment for the regular DualShock controller, which will give text-happy gamers a full QWERTY-style selection of keys with which to enter passwords, browse the web, and send rude messages to defeated opponents. It also supports a touchpad mode for mouse-like functionality.
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