Firstly, it was brought to our attention that veteran PSP’ers are going to have to buy all new equipment. The old PSP used the nice, common mini-USB for all it’s charging and connecting needs, but the new PSPgo uses a multi-use port, meaning all new accessories. Not even the power cord will work… yay for wasting plastic.

Secondly, as you are probably aware, the darn thing costs $249.99 retail, which is a far cry from what the original PSP is going for now.. for basically the same hardware in a smaller, more portable, and UMD media free package. Apparently Andrew House, a  Sony’s SCEE branch President has come outright and said there is a “certain premium” for owning the new hardware, and the price isn’t due to retail markups or research and development. Thanks Sony, for charging us just because.

Thirdly, there are rumors that a PSPgo App Store is in the works. According to Kotaku, they apps will cost around $2-6 U.S. dollars and have to be under 100mb. There are also rumors that while there will be games included in these apps, many will be non-game related. Looks like they are trying to step in on the mobile-app department that the iPhone/iTouch basically own and the Zune HD hopes to take a chunk out of this fall.

Lastly, Engadget was able to get a hands-on of the PSPgo outside of E3. Apparently it doesn’t look or feel cheap, which is great news considering the price tag You can go watch the video here.

Thanks Engadget, Kotaku and Gizmodo.

Ok, so they’ve done this before with both the PlayStation 1 and 2, but this is their first hand-held so it only made sense to continue the trend. The weird part is though, that beside creating a sleeker and slimmer version of the PSP, they’ve done away with actual game media (for the PSP called UMD’s). While there is a full SD slot, there’s no way to get play your old games directly, which seems like an odd move, but is actually the wave of the future. Kudos to Sony for deciding to be the first name-brand hand-held to go nearly completely digital.

The good news for old PSP owners is that Sony plans to have a back catalog of around 300 games or more at least which will be available to owners of the original game via some download mechanic. The bad news is that it will apparently be a “short-term program” according to Engadget. They will still be selling the UMDs as well for old school PSPers who can’t afford the apparent $250 price tag on technology that’s been out on the market for years. Oh one other bummer.. while the price of manufacturing and distribution of the UMDs will be drastically lower, (since it costs next to nothing to distribute digital  media) the price for the games will be the same regardless. Booo, Sony… Boooo…. ok I forgive you. :searches online for preorders:

Props to Engadget.. holla. Visit their hands-on Gallery.. yummm

As reported on Engadget, Sony plans to distribute about 60 new CD’s this December on the Blu-spec media, with prices ranging from $25 – $42. Are you kidding me? I can buy an entire album online for 10 bucks and you want me to spend more money on the musical score of a Movie then on the Blu-ray DVD of the actual film…

Here’s the bonus: Apparently the Discs somehow still work with the classic CD Players. So somehow they stretched all that sound quality goodness onto their large-capacity high-quality discs, but your old CD player your Aunt Carol bought for you for your birthday 12 years ago at Walmart will pump out all those high def tunes…

Call me a non-believer, but I think this is just a snazzy way of making the stupid pay for something they already own. Only time will tell, time I won’t spend (along with my money).