If CVG and VG247 are to be believed, the PlayStation Vita won’t arrive on European store shelves until early 2012. Although the release date has yet to be confirmed by Sony, they are still aiming for a pre-Christmas launch in North America. It would be disappointing if the European release date is in 2011.
Recent rumors suggest that NGP won’t be the final name of Sony’s new portable console. A story by Games Pundit, claims that Sony’s NGP will actually be called ‘PS Vita’ – Vita is Latin/Italian for ‘life’. Naturally, Sony haven’t confirmed the news (lets wait until E3 for official confirmation), so for now, this is filed under the rumor category.
Multiple sources have confirmed that the PlayStation Phone release is imminent, though they failed to agree on an exact release date or time frame. The so-called “Playstation Phone” will be shown at next month’s Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona, alongside a new portable game player, the report says.
If you are looking to get hold of a new PlayStation Handheld, you can expect the PlayStation Phone to be announced in February next year. Rumors suggest the phone will be announced in February, followed by a launch in April. In the meantime Sony has trademarked several names in relation to “mobile phones and accessories for mobile phones.”
If last year was anything to go by (when the PSPgo was announced), Sony could be prepping another big announcement for the PSP. According to MVC, a number of publishers are waiting for an announcement of the next iteration of the PSP before announcing their games line-up for the portable console.
An unidentified source has informed gaming news site CVG of Logitech’s plans to create a UMD Drive add-on for the PSPgo. No price or release information was revealed by the source, but apparently the add-on would “plug into the PSPgo, allowing users to play their UMD games on the portable.” Logitech UK said that they’re “not aware of it, so it may be something the US office is working on.” Neither Logitech’s US office nor Sony have so far said anything about this rumor.
Rumors indicate that Sony is still working on a new PSP model even with the release of the PSPGo only months away. Eurogamer.es is claiming to have insider sources who say that the PSP2 will have a quad-core graphics chip. This is reportedly a quad-core version of the low-power SGX543MP chip, codenamed “Hydra”. Of course, this cannot be confirmed as Sony hasn’t even announced a new model yet.
The rumor mill has been running overtime this week with information on what the PSP2 will contain. One of the more convincing rumors has revealed some interesting information from a supposed “inside source”. According to this source, the PSP2 will be called “PSP Go!”, in line with the range of services already offered on the PSP ( Go!Cam, Go!Explore etc). More details on the new PSP model should be revealed at E3 in June, and the new model is expected to launch towards the end of this year.
The UMD is finally about to bite the dust, according to David Perry of Shiny Entertainment. In a twitter update, Perry said “Sony finally removed the stupid battery-sucking UMD disc drive”. Of course, this hasn’t been confirmed by Sony so place it under the rumor category for now. In related developments, the PSP2 is indeed real according to Perry once again. He states that a developer he knows is currently working on it right now, which leads us to believe that prototypes are already available.
