And it's a long one. Bring tea, and biscuits. Or, if you're a raving mad Square Enix fan, those two plus whatever else it is you'll need for 5:13 of hot, one-on-one Final Fantasy fisticuff action.

[thanks everyone who sent this in!]

PSP 3000 Battery Myths Shattered!

The video gaming industry was devastated to learn recently that the recently announced PSP 3000, with its new, brighter screen, built-in microphone and fancy new PS button, may lead to shorter battery life. GameSpot reported recently, based on a conversation with SCEA's John Koller, that higher consumption may reduce battery life by "about 20 minutes." Just soul crushing...

Fortunately, the director of hardware marketing now says that's not actually true, that the PSP 3000 will have an equivalent battery life of four to six hours when gaming, less when watching UMDs. Koller writes on the official PlayStation.blog that "our engineers in Japan worked to reduce the power consumption of the overall system including its components" ending our long national nightmare of slightly reduced up-time due to battery charge. Thank you, God!

New PSP’s Battery Life Equivalent to Current PSP [PlayStation.blog]

Good news, fans of the internet. The PSP will be getting direct access to the PlayStation Store this fall, eliminating the need to travel through the tubes via your PlayStation 3 or PC to secure downloadable goodies for Sony's handheld. According to a report from IGN, a future firmware update will let PSP owners surf the store from the comfort of their toilets or local coffee houses, making theme-grabbing a breeze.

Don't junk your PS3s yet, though, as Sony is also planning to introduce a new feature that will let you take your ad hoc-only PSP games online, simulating infrastructure mode by way of your PlayStation 3. That means select titles that were previously playable only locally will be playable with folks nationwide. Note that "select", because it looks like not every title will make the jump online via your PS3.

Sony Boosts PSP Networking Capabilities [IGN]

PSP-3000 To Support Dualshock 3, 480i Video?

Got your internet filing cabinet handy? File this between "dubious" and "unexpected". Maxconsole say that - according to a "Best Buy insider" - the new PSP-3000 model won't just feature a brighter screen and cleaner edges, it'll apparently let you plug in your DualShock 3 pad and use it to play games. It'll also allow the outputting of video to a TV via 480i, instead of the currently-mandated 480p. The DS3 thing, it sounds both sketchy and useless (unless more developers start taking remote play a lot more seriously), but the 480i thing might be good news if you're some kind of...uh...a...travelling salesman (?), dependant on your PSP for entertainment (??), and often find yourself in cheap hotels with old, crummy, composite-only TV sets.

Insider says PSP 3000 will be able to play games with PS3 controller [Maxconsole]

James Yu over at GameSpot has just posted an excellent hands-on comparison of the old Sony PSP 2000 model and the shiny new PSP 3000, announced just last week at the Games Convention in Leipzig. While we've already posted the comparison that showed up on Famitsu, the GameSpot article has a few things going for it. More comparison photos of the screen, which looks to be where the biggest noticeable differences lie, and the fact that James writes in easy-to-understand English, always appreciated by us English-exclusive humans like myself. Hit the link below for the full skinny on what has changed in obsessive detail, right down to the surface textures of the plastic.

Sony PSP 3000 Hands-On [GameSpot]

The Wiz - Gamepark's Successor To The GP2x

Gamepark Holdings has announced its new games handheld - the followup to its (fairly) successful GP2X.

Like the GP2X, it runs a Linux-based OS, has a GBA-ish form factor and is wide open for homebrew developers to code original games and — always the killer GP2x app — emulation, emulation, emulation.

Unlike its ancestor, it has a 533MHZ Arm 9 processor with 3D acceleration, 64MB of Ram and a touchscreen. There is only the one screen, so DS emulation is fairly unlikely, but there are already some touchscreen games and apps in the pipeline as you can see in this ridiculously large picture. Long JPG is loooong.

Also new is support for Flash 7.0 which should open up the possibility of playing web-based games that you manage to get on an SD card by whatever means necessary. There is no wifi, which is a shame, but you can't have everything.

The Wiz is available for pre-order now at around $179.99 , due out in October.

Don't see how the two go together, really, but hey, I'm not an advertising guru. Fosters - who here in Australia brew Stella Artois under license - have decided to form a sales team specifically geared at shifting more Stella. Which in a country where local beer is the breakfast of champions is a tough sell. So they figured they'd think outside the box, and give all fifty members of the team a limited edition Stella Artois PSP. It's got a Stella graphic on the back, came in a Stella pouch and has a Stella XMB theme. Looks nice! Won the acclaim of advertisers! Pity, then, that all it's going to do is make punters think the PSP tastes like diet cats piss as well.

PSPs replace paper for brand storytelling [Lowe + Rivet, thanks Chrisso!]

PSP-2001 vs PSP-3000

Announced yesterday, the PSP-3000 will be the third major iteration of Sony's PlayStation Portable line. So let's take a good look at it! Below are galleries showing the two colours that'll be available in North America: Piano Black and Mystic Silver. As you can see in the pic above, there's a third colour - Pearl White - but that one's only for Europe and Japan. For now, anyways.

Of Course Capcom Can't Quit The PSP

Those Monster Hunter games sure are popular. Over on the Ask Capcom forum, SOME DUDE heard from HIS FRIEND that Capcom would only be making Monster Hunter games, cease production on other titles and port PS2 games to the PSP. To which Capcom mouthpiece Christian Svensson replied:

Absolutely 100 percent false... We're still making new PSP games. We may be the most successful PSP publisher in the world with Monster Hunter Portable 2nd and 2ndG. It'd be a difficult decision to defend stopping development when we have such success on the platform.

So, don't worry SOME DUDE!

Ask Capcom weekly roundup [Capcom via Pocket Gamer] [Pic]

PSP Gets A Ten-Year Plan As Well

Know this, industry followers: Sony aren't kidding around when they say the PS3 will have a ten-year shelf life. They mean it. It's hard-wired company policy, that comes straight from the top. What's not so widely known, however, is that it's a policy that is being applied to all PlayStation products. Which, yeah, includes the PS2 (which is nearly there), but also the PSP. Sony's Scott Steinberg:

We do not have a planned obsolescence strategy [for the PSP]. Whether it's Skype or some other peripherals, it's not just a dumb terminal that lies secluded and isn't enhanced with all the recent technologies and opportunities.

Did he...did he just call the DS a "dumb terminal"?

SCEA's Steinberg On 'Future-Proofing' A Ten-Year PS3 [Gamasutra]

FCC Confirms New PSP Model On The Way

It's not the PSP-3000, but it's damn close! Documents published on the FCC's website have confirmed that Sony are to release a new model of the PSP, the PSP-3001. Before you ask, yes, the new PSP looks...a lot like your old PSP. There appear to have been no changes made to the exterior of the unit, nor to its core specifications, meaning the changes will be for less sexy things like cost-reduction (by using newer, cheaper components). Course, if that is your idea of sexy, there's a mountain of paperwork you can read up on at the link below while you get yourself all lathered up.

PSP-3001 [FCC, via Gizmodo]

EEDAR Predicts Mammoth Wii Win in July, Xbox 360 Sees Only Increase

Here's something a little different. This morning Electronic Entertainment Design and Research sent us their predictions for July sales. While the monthly data that NPD typically sends out is hard numbers, these are all predictions based on EEDAR's analysis of early sales. Those hard numbers won't be hitting till later this month.

The in-depth packet doesn't give us predictions of the top selling games of the month across the board, it does tell us that the group believes that the Wii will manage to outsell the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 combined in July and than the DS will approach tripling Playstation Portable sales.

According to the predictions, the Playstation 3 will see a sizable drop this month in sales down more than 130,000 consoles to 235, 447 while the Xbox 360 wil see an increase of 105,000. The Wii's drop will be a predicted and substantial 170,455.

Here are the raw predictions:

SEGA Ships 500,000 Phantasy Star Portable Copies

Japan's latest gaming love affair is SEGA PSP title Phantasy Star Portable. Since going on sale July 31st, 500,000 copies of the game have been shipped in the week following its launch. No Western release has been announced for this action RPG as of yet.

セガ、PSP「ファンタシースターポータブル」発売から1週間で出荷本数50万本達成 [Game Watch]

Child Waiting for New Heart Has PSP Stolen

An 8-year-old Colorado boy awaiting a heart transplant had his Playstation Portable stolen by a teenage bully while visiting a relative, deputies said.

While the 19-year-old suspect was arrested, the gaming system was never located, so Adam's County deputies pooled their money and bought Juan Martinez a new PSP and a dozen games for the system.

"He's just a little kid. I don't like bullies," Deputy Michael Robbins said. "That's what it seemed like to me, one older kid picking on a little kid.

"We couldn't let the bad guys win."

And that's your moment of zen for the day.

Deputies give boy new game system after his was stolen [Rocky Horror News Mountain]

Macross PSP Trailer

We've had our PSPs dusted off for a few weeks now in anticipation of this. Same for our emergency Japanese catchphrase guides, along with the URLs of our favourite Japanese importers. Because really, if you're a Macross fan, how can this not already look like the best thing to happen to the PSP?

[via Matix @ NeoGAF]

Just to Be Clear: FF Versus XIII "PS3 Only Worldwide"

A year and a half ago, the PSP wasn't exactly wowing consumers or third-party publishers. Even John Koller, director of hardware marketing at Sony, might agree, telling MTV Multiplayer that, at the time, PSP gamers "were mostly ports" of their console siblings, resulting in minimal wows.

That's going to change, Koller says, as "we’re going to see a lot of very large franchise games come from third-parties" starting at the end of this year and into 2009. Consumers are"going to be a bit of a surprise, they’re going to be like ‘Wow, that’s coming to PSP?’” according to John.

The PSP is certainly in a good position in Japan, regularly outselling all other hardware platforms for the better part of this year. We'll have to see if the wows translate to sales over the next 18 months.

Sony Plans PSP Comeback In America, Recovering From System’s Low Point [MTV Multiplayer]