PSPgo battery "equivalent" to old ones

By Tom Bramwell Published 15 June, 2009

App Store-style service also reported.

Sony has said that the PSPgo battery will allow you to play games and watch films for roughly the same amount of time as the models currently on the market.

"We have adopted an embedded battery to realise a smaller and lighter PSP system. The battery life is equivalent with the current models meaning approximately 3 to 6 hours for gameplays and approximately 3 to 5 hours for playing back videos," product manager Adam Grant wrote on the European PlayStation blog.

Elsewhere, Destructoid reports that Sony is gearing up to launch a section of the PlayStation Store similar to the iTunes App Store, stocked with small and cheap "non-retail" games and applications.

The new store, which Destructoid said will be announced at the gamescom show in Cologne in August, will limit file sizes to 100MB, with pricing said to be between two and six dollars for the US market. The report cited "sources close to game development", and Sony hasn't officially responded.

PSPgo was leaked prior to and then announced at E3, and sports a slide-screen design, 16GB of internal memory and no UMD drive. It will cost EUR 249 / USD 249 when it launches in Europe and the US on 1st October.

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About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (10) Latest comment 3 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • DFawkes #1 3 years ago

    An apps store might be a bit of a copy, but then again online direct download stores for indie apps existed way before Apple came along. I think it's a good idea, though I hope they make it available for all PSP owners. I'd hate to think they expected people to pay the as yet unconfirmed (probably £250) UK price just to be able to buy stuff at a new store.

    I'm sure some apps will be for PSP Go only, so fair enough for those. But I'm hoping they'll make any apps that'd work on other PSPs available to all.

  • Markusdragon #2 3 years ago

    Stupidity! The biggest drain on the original battery was running the UMD drive, so why the hell have they actively gimped the battery packs on the UMDless, smaller-screened model?

  • jonbwfc #3 3 years ago

    Markus - patently because the battery also has been made smaller to fit in the smaller console. Not exactly rocket science.

    A 100MB limit may be a bit low actually - there are already a fair few iPhone games that beat that limit, mostly from the big publishers mind. The Assassin's Creed game is like 120MB for example. So I assume the indie developers get the limit, whereas the likes of EA get to make games however big they want them to be. Given the capacity of a UMD, I'd assume a lot of the current PSP games are over 1GB.

    Also the point about the App Store isn't that the games are small, it's that it's relatively straightforward for developers get games up there. If Sony decide to put all the indie apps through the same QA procedures they apply to the big boys, this is going to fall on it's arse.

    Jon

  • Skywise #4 3 years ago

    I would be very interested in the PSP Go 2, but the PSP Go has too old tech now and still not enough battery power.
    I like this focus on downloads a lot though.

    Maybe the PSP Go should cost less than the DSi to be competitive?
    Edited by 1 at 15/06/09 @ 10:23

  • louyfitz #5 3 years ago

    well there goes my hopes of having more than 5 mins playing a game before that bloody orange light starts flashing.

    Over £200 is a lot of money for something that isn't a lot better than the current generation.

    although the download only games are a good idea.

  • barnard666 #6 3 years ago

    with no disc drive it should be 8 - 10 hours

  • dacicus #7 3 years ago

    Jon, you are correct in stating that most of the PSP games in our days are passing the 1gb limit. There are quite a few titles that are pssing even over 1.5gb or reach 2gb.
    5-6 hours battery life? The phat had like 6-7 hours, while the slim had 8-10 hours. So why the hell such a short life for PSP Go's battery?!! I'm puzzled....

    P.S.: officially the PSP Go is out of my buying list. I'd rather buy the new Nintendo DSi...The fact that PSP Go requires an entirely new set of accessories, including the USB cable, the short life of the battery, the price that it's a bit high for what it actually offers are making PSP Go banned from my shopping list. If Sony will reconsider some things , later on, I might think to pick up a PSP Go. Until then, PSP Go is a no-no for me.
    Edited by 2 at 15/06/09 @ 13:08

  • Skinme #8 3 years ago

    I'm rapidly beginning to think this is another "white elephant" for Sony. Smaller battery does not automatically equal shorter battery life. Battery technology moves at a similar pace to other electronics, take a look at mobile phone batteries if you don't believe me.

    If this does come out at £250 it will be an instant fail. I can pick up an Xbox 360 Elite for less! Plus a DSi is only £150....

    At least when Sony brought out smaller iterations of previous consoles (PS1 & 2), they priced them at the same or less than their "fat" originals.

    I was really hoping this new PSP would get more developers involved, but I just can't see how this is going to boost hardware sales significantly enough to justify development of AAA titles.

  • callum9999 #9 3 years ago

    Skinme - Although I hate it and won't be buying it, the PSPGO is not the same as another revision to make it slimmer - its a completely different model. See also the PSP, PSP-2000 and PSP-3000 - didn't they come out at the same price as the models they replaced?

    Dacius - Smaller batteries with higher capacity are more expensive, which would make the PSPGO more expensive than it already is.

  • TRUTH #10 3 years ago

    PSP GO - smaller screen, shorter battery life, 16gb - which will be filled fairly fast esp with games like Final Fantasy and other large games; so this will limit to what and how many games you can buy...I have over 20 games & planing to get more esp memory hungry strategy (by the Mytran Wars is pretty good turn-based strategy game)...all these will never fit on a 16gb PSP GO - also it's probably approx 14.5 or less due to software to run PSP Go!...This product should be priced less then PSP 3000!!