Darth Vader has been most righteously shafted.

It'd be awesome to get some expected life stats with this new battery on the slim. I still have my old PSP, but it's just collecting dust because it's barely playable without plugging into a wall, and if I'm going to be tethered at home I may as well just play a game on my TV. If this new battery can get at least 6 hours of play time, I may just break down and buy a slim, because there actually ARE games I wanna play on the PSP now.

$45? I got my 'better' battery pack from a guy for only $8. Totally worth it. Though since I own a PSP Slim now I'll probably be browsing ebay for this one. =(

I'm sure Amazon will have it for $30 in no time.

Shame there's no ceramic white battery cover... When I switched from the original PSP to the slim I got the Star Wars bundle (I already had Daxter but I really liked the silver one).

But cosmetic crisis aside, I'd most likely get one of those new battery packs, with the amount of traveling I do it'd make the PSP even better.

Maybe they are trying to encourage people to learn how to paint. It shouldn't be that hard to pain the cover white.

This seems like one of those things that really should have been included with the PSP Slim.

I already have an old battery, all I really want is the cover......maybe by some miracle they'll sell the replacement covers separate. :/

@NitrousO: I'm sure their sales are better off if they sell this batter separately rather than increasing the price of the PSP back to the original price.

@NitrousO: That goes without saying. The product was advertised as having a longer battery life, meanwhile the damned battery life lasts less than half the time. My PSP's battery lasts 3 hours and 10 minutes (fucking rediculous.) The only reason I bought the slim one was because I expected a better battery life. Whoops.

@Kitsune: It's only a matter of time until 3rd parties start knocking off copies of the official 'bulge cover'

@Furious_Liver: They said that it was more battery efficient, but it has a smaller battery. If you were to use the same battery then it would have a better battery life.

@Furious_Liver: Turn down the screen brightness, maybe? I know I get 6 to 7 out of my slim playing Jeanne D'Arc, but I'm on low brightness settings and music at 3/4s volume.

I will be buying this.

Why can't they just make a battery that snaps into the back so that it is the back cover as well? It would let the battery be larger without making the system any bigger.

where is the love for ceremic white psp's?

Maybe the black back doesn't look bad with the white PSP because it would create a nice two toned effect.

@Furious_Liver:

That really depends I got 4-5 hours out of the old PSP playing Daxter (Brightness to mid and music at about mid as well) and 6-6:30 on the PSP Slim. I put the old battery on the new one and got 8 hours (Then again my old battery was a bit worn off and the no cover thing was a bit of a worry)

@ceilingFANBOY: PSP Toasters Edition?

Strange.

My friend has been looking for a PSP (Fat) battery, and found that he can't get it at any brick and mortar stores. He also found that he couldn't find any slim batteries, either.

Goodbye Pandora's Battery making with these babies.

-nesdude

I have one of these 2200 batts. I popped it into my slim, and at 93% capacity, I had 11 hrs and 55 minutes of playtime remaining. I've been waiting for the replacement cover since day 1.

@Knoxximus: That's awesome to hear :) I just got my PSP Slim (silver) recently and have been playing Jeanne D'arc a ton. I'm picking up Disgaea this week and possibly Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions. Great time to be a fan of turn-based tactics games that's for sure. The extra battery life will definitely come in handy ^_^

This seems like it is inevitably a dumb questions based on all the comments, but can you not just take the Darth Vader edition's cover off, put the new battery in, then put the Vader cover back on? Something i'm missing here?

I don't understand why some think the extra extended should come with the original package. What sense does that make? Does the DS Lite ship with an extra battery, let alone an extended one? They also did not claim longer battery life with this new player, but better battery efficiency which it does have. You should get about the same amount as the original with the included battery. If you want more, you get the extended. I don't see anything wrong with that strategy.

@Afore Notation: This battery is larger than the battery which comes with the slim. It is the same size as the regular PSP battery, and therefore will not fit with the original battery backing.

Any ideas on how far it bulges out? I have a case that my DS and PSP share (oh the humanity) and I'm really hoping I can still fit it in there. My DS needs its roommate, you know.

@TheKbob, zoesch: Great advice, but no thanks. I'm always glued to the charger anywho, which is in front of the comp. That way I can repeatedly tap F5 on Kotaku. :D

@ceilingFANBOY: Yeah I learned of that once I got the damn thing. I was so excited for Disgaea I didn't even bother to do any research on the psp slim. @__@

@Afore Notation: This battery will bulge out the back, thus requiring the custom cover.

So is there any word on whether this new battery has some sort of security feature to prevent it from being turned into a pandora?

Just picked up a psp2000 (cheesy names ftw!) a little bit ago, loving it to bits. The custom firmware just makes the system. Battery life is outstanding too if you just run everything off the memory stick. Only complaint i have is that it takes forever to convert a movie to viewable format. Oh, and kotaku doesnt seem to load right on the browser.

@Furious_Liver: Well that's unfortunate. I was stranded on an airport layover for 4.5 hours and the thing managed to stick around the whole time for a dungeon siege binge. No idea why you're getting such mediocre lifespans other than the obvious brightness/sound/wifi stuff.

I hate that I cant buy myself a PSP because I made it clear to my girlfriend that I want the Daxter bundle and even though she says she doesnt have enough money for it she could tell my parents and maybe they will get it for me for Christmas. Thats the sucky thing about Christmas time. There are things that you want that you cant buy because you dont know whether or not someone is going to get it for you and if they dont get it for you then you feel like you just went a couple of months without that thing that you could have had earlier had you known that no one was going to get it for you because you would have been able to purchase it a couple of months earlier and you would feel bad if you made it obvious that you want something for Christmas and then go out and buy it so if someone does actually pick up on your hints and gives you the gift you have to feel like a jerk when you have to take the gift back because you already bought it.

Oh well, I'm going to go to bed now because if I am sleeping then I don't feel as guilty about not doing this statistics exam that I should have done because then I won't feel like I could have been doing it instead of staying on the computer all night. (yea, I have reasons for just completely giving up in this class even though I could easily pass it if I put some effort into it)

P.S.- I am aware that this comment has a lot of run on sentences. Well, actually, only a few but only because those run on sentences are so long that there isn't much room for a lot of them. That's what happens when I get tired.

Fucking apostrophes working again. I hate them ' ' ' '.

@ceilingFANBOY: What? Sorry, I was playing my PSP.
I kid, I kid.

@ceilingFANBOY: Ohhhh, thank you for the enlightenment. I completely missed the point of this product--I thought it was a new slim size batter with better battery life, not the old battery with a new cover.

you dirty sony bastards, no white cover?

Chill people, Silver and White covers are coming :)

err..sorry the Silver is already included here. I'm positive the white will be released as well.

UK announcement at all? Or is this only for the US?

damnit... i don't want extra covers! i still have an old psp!

i wonder if this batter is really much better from the one i already have.

its double the power of the slim-battery... which sucks compared to the original... so if i already have the original, how much better is the new battery?

these are things i MUST know!

Aww man, it's only for black PSP-1000s? Man, I wish I had one...

Oh, wait. XD

It's about time they put some battery covers out. There have only been people looking for replacement covers since the slim first came out. Now the question is do I want another 2400 mAh battery or is Sony going to release a separate battery cover for those of us that picked up an extra battery already.

@brello: it shouldn't bulge far. The bigger battery looks to be maybe 33% thicker than the slim's battery, which is pretty thin. So long as you're not really really tight on space in that case it shouldn't make any difference.

@brello: Ouch. :(

So I'm a little confused. As a cost cutting measure on the slim, Sony made the system more efficient but made the actual battery smaller?

Also, I was under the impression the back of the slim was fat without the bulges on the sides that the original had. So putting in one of these new batteries would make it bulge on one side but not the other... do I have that right?

Sounds uncomfortable.

Not really improved battery, as much as it is non-Pandora compatible.

Didn't they sell that for ages without the cover?
Anyway, 1800MAh is way more ample than I'd ever imagined. I play the hell out of my PSP, and from the time they were launched it's only run flat once. My DS has several times because the only indicator is a red light moments before it dies. :/

@Altima NEO:
Proof, or just speculation? Not that it sounds far fetched by any means...

@fuchikoma: Yeah, I bought that same battery in August last year in Japan. They just added the covers for this version i guess.

@Drew: I was thinking so too, but the price is just not worth the small difference...