Sony thinks small

Sony have finally come through with the goods, showing a truly handheld production model PSP uncabled and running under its own power. Looks very nice too. It's been difficult to get a sense of the exact size of the unit until now. Thanks to a side-by-side with the retro NES styled GBA SP, we can now see clearly just how small the PSP is. Sony unveiled this real PSP at a business conference held in Tokyo two days ago. They also showed the Universal Media Disc (UMD) in action, and announced over a hundred PSP titles in development.


On the local front, Sony Australia have announced a compact redesigned Playstation2, much like Sony's PSone was to the original Playstation. It looks remarkably like a PS2 that's been put in a sandwich press. The original PS2 was just shy of 8cm in width, whereas the new version is less than 3cm wide! From the pictures released so far, it doesn't look like standing it vertically would be a good idea, but I guess they know what they're doing. It comes with an integrated ethernet port (so no peripheral network adapter is required), and it's fairly obvious from its size that it will not support a hard drive. (Sony have officially canned the release of a hard-drive for PS2 in Europe and Australasia.) Strangely enough, Sony have not referred to the new unit as the "PSTwo", a name they trademarked some time ago, but appear not to be using.
The new PS2 will hit stores in Australia on the 29th of October.


The new and the old - Jenny Craig would be proud.