Sony's Pink PSP

News Article: Pink Playstation Portables have finally arrived. Pink PSP go on sale officially in the UK on 27-10-2006. No longer is gaming considered a boy only pastime. For years girls denied showing public interest in computer games, then with the arrival of purple games consoles, singing and dancing games, the scene was set - 'girls wanted purple consoles'.

Limited edition or here to stay? Clearly other games console manufactures have taken notice of the potential in marketing limited edition pink consoles. There's no mistaking what colour console is inside the packaging; with screaming pop-star lady Pink herself being used to promote the limited edition pink PSP. Following the success Sony have released a limited edition Pink Slim line PS2. Look out for the limited edition champagne gold PSP in 2007.

White PlayStation Portables on Sale	Black PSP for Sale

PSP Themes

The PlayStation Portable's default background colour changes depending on the current month of the year:

• January – Silver
• February – Yellow
• March – Green
• April – Pink
• May – Dark green
• June – Purple
• July – Aqua
• August – Blue
• September – Violet
• October – Gold
• November – Light brown
• December – Red

You may also choose your own colour theme, or specify a background image from a PlayStation Portable memory stick.

Giga pack Contents

• PSP Console
• Headphones with Remote Control
• Pouch and Wrist Strap
• AC Adapter
• Battery Pack
• Demo Disk
• Cleaning Cloth
• 1GB Memory Stick Duo

Variations and Accessories

The PlayStation Portable is sold as a Value Pack, a Core Pack, a Giga-Pack, and an Entertainment Pack. The core pack is £129.99. The Value Pack contains everything the core does, as well as a 32 MB Memory Stick Pro Duo, earphones with remote control, a slip-case, a wrist strap, and a Sampler Disc (in some territories).

The Value Pack retails for £159.99. Since the release the Value Pack has been superseded by the Entertainment Pack, containing the items of the Core Pack plus a copy of ATV Off road Fury: Blazin' Trails, the UMD movie Lords  of Dogtown, and a 1 GB Memory Stick Pro Duo. The Giga-Pack is similar to the value pack, except the Memory Stick Pro Duo is 1 GB, and includes a USB Cable with stand. It retails for £214.

Features

The PlayStation Portable's analogue stick, often referred to as the "nub", is a circular disc which slides rather than tilts.

Multimedia and Coder/Decoders

The PSP MPEG4 video format is not great on video and audio bit-rates. Resolution of 320×240, a video bit rate of 500 Kb per second, and an audio sample rate @ 22050 k. A 22 minute video file is roughly 55 MB enough to fit on a Memory Stick Duo as small as a 128 MB.

Camera and GPS

The GPS provide an extra feature for games such as Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops.

Wi-Fi (Multi-Play)

The PlayStation Portable can connect to a wireless network through Wi-Fi IEEE 802.11b which allows surfing the web or connecting to other PSP's for multiplayer gaming. The Wi-Fi data rate bandwidth is 11 Mbps, within a 50m range of other devices

PSP Hardware

The PlayStation Portable is a handheld game console released on September 1, 2005. PSP offers the ability to play video games, watch videos, and listen to music, view photos, as well as Internet browsing functionality

Form Factor

The unit measures 170 mm (6.7 in) in length, 74 mm (2.9 in) in width, and 23 mm (0.9 in) in depth, and has a mass of 280 grams (a weight of 0.62 lbs) including the battery. The TFT LCD screen measures 110 mm (4.3 in) diagonal with a 16:9 ratio and a 480×272 pixel resolution capable of 16.77 million colours.

 

PSP V3.0 Update

Fans of the PlayStation Portable have been waiting patiently for a big system update for a long while. Versions 2.81 and 2.82 were just security updates and nothing else exciting. But the wait for the next big PSP update is finally over, as Sony Computer Entertainment finally released the long-awaited PSP version 3.00 via its Network Update feature. This update is now available in the US and Japan -- a European version of 3.00 is hopefully due out sometime soon as well. Why is PSP v3.00 so big? For one, it's a big-number update, not just another midway version update. These are the ones everybody looks for (and also, the ones that all the homebrew fans eye carefully for any changes to their use of PSP.) More importantly, PSP v3.00 adds some long-awaited features to PSP, including downloadable PSone game titles ("Ridge Racer! It's aaa Ridge Racer!") as well as the exciting Remote Play features with PlayStation 3. The update will not please everybody, however, as a few major features are still only implemented in a cursory way in this version update.

The following features are added to the PlayStation Portable ability set with PSP v 3.00:

The new PlayStation Network support essentially means that you can download PSone classics to your PlayStation Portable from the PlayStation Network, as announced at E3 2005. The feature hugely expands the library of titles to the PlayStation Portable -- barring a few control issues, SCE has the entire original Playstation console library to pick and choose from for release on the handheld. It should also allow Sony to release new games for PSP, just as it has on PlayStation 3 with games like Blast Factor and Cash Guns Chaos. (Note also that PSP v3.00 adds a new menu option under the GAME menu, the Certificate Utility. We have not yet been able to download a PSone game for PSP, but would assume that this key icon stores your registered ownership of your download.) The big caveat, of course, is that you can only get these games right now by downloading them and then transferring them via your PlayStation 3 ... if you have a PlayStation 3. Sony has not finished the technology to directly download PSone games to PSP (it would require access to the newly-launched PlayStation Store, which only works with PS3 at the moment), so there is no way to directly get these games onto PSP just yet, nor is there a way to download them if you don't yet have a PS3.

Sony is of course working on fixing this problem, with rumors of PSone-to-PSP direct downloads by the summer of 2007. Also added is Remote Play, a feature that lets you stream media from your PS3 to your PSP (and the opposite is also said to be true.) Now, you can set your console to Remote Play and watch your home videos, browse through your photo collection, and listen to your MP3s anywhere in the house! Sony is working on adding a feature to this to allow PS3 to stream this same media all across the internet. The Remote Play feature is designed currently to work only with the 60GB version of the PS3 (due to the fact that it's the only package of the two with built-in WiFi, and you need WiFi to operate this feature), but in our tests, the feature seemed to use the possibly-accessible WPA-PSK (AES) setting for WLAN devices, so an external wireless router might be able to do the job (if you can get it into that exclusive mode.)

 

Your PSP, Wikipedia PSP Portable Game Console

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