According to Shacknews, rumor has it that Sony is currently working on the successor to the current PSP, which may (or may not) dump the current optical disc-based format in favor of solid state media and/or hard disks. The Shack says that "a reliable source close to Sony" indicates that the next-gen handheld will ship with a hard disk, then speculates that backwards compatability could be retained and that the device could ship "in the next three years".

I wouldn't be sad to see the UMD format go the way of Blu-Ray.. I meant Beta-Max, sorry. Loading from optical media is still much too slow for my taste in on-the-go gaming. And I, like the rest of the universe, couldn't possibly care less about buying UMD movies. If Sony were to introduce a digital distribution model (that doesn't suck) for the next PlayStation Portable, well, I'd be alright with that.

New "PSP 2" in the Works [Shacknews]

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