In the same way that Apple has moved the iPod lock stock and barrel to a handset, we have known for some time that Sony plans to take the PSP onto the handset, something that it acknowledged with a handset patent which Sony Ericsson filed back in June in the US.
Now Pocketgamer, a gaming web site, has been told outright by a Sony Ericsson executive at the recent Leipzig gaming conference that the handset PSP will be out in time for Christmas.
The problem has always been providing a device which will look and feel like a PSP and then change to the familiar look and feel of a handset, for when it is in that mode. Sony Ericsson says that the only thing that has been stopping the launch is that it wants to blow the market away with the device and doesn’t want anything halfhearted, and wants the second most popular portable gaming device (after the Nintendo DS2) to play all the existing games, feel like a hardwearing robust gaming device when playing games, and still manage to look like a slim and elegant handset when it is not.
The failed Nokia N-Gage has just gone through this same transition and threatens to take the handset gaming market by storm and has attracted many of the major gaming companies at least. If Sony got a PSP on a phone out for Christmas, it would have a hit of the proportions of the iPhone on its hands, and then some.