Sony's new PSP is slimmer, includes video output
It's not quite the PSP 2 some might've hoped for, but Sony is giving its handheld console a serious refresh in the form of a slimmer, lighter and faster "updated" PSP. The new unit still includes the 4.3-inch LCD and UMD, but is 33 percent lighter …
Context & Ripple Effects
The announcement lands on schedule: Engadget reported in May that a PSP hardware refresh was coming this year, and Kotaku laid out most of the slim details in early June. What is genuinely new in the official reveal is video output — turning the handheld into a device that plugs into a TV — alongside a body 33 percent lighter, while the 4.3-inch LCD and UMD drive carry over unchanged.
Timing matters: the PSP refresh arrives one day after Sony confirmed a $100 PlayStation 3 price cut, reversing a denial from Sony's president just days earlier, and both moves sit under chairman Howard Stringer's June pledge to shift the company from recovery to growth.
First-order effects
- PSP owners gain TV-out for games and video on the new model, repositioning the handheld from a purely portable device into a living-room media player without adding screens or dropping UMD.
- Retailers and accessory makers now have a second current PSP form factor to stock, splitting shelf space and case/dock inventories between the original and slim units.
Second-order effects
- Nintendo faces a refreshed PSP whose headline feature — TV output — targets the DS's family-living-room base, pressuring a response beyond incremental DS redesigns.
- Retaining UMD signals Sony is not yet ready to abandon its disc format for handhelds, keeping movie-studio UMD release decisions alive even as digital distribution pressure builds.
Third-order effects
- If mid-cycle hardware refreshes become the norm, handheld consoles shift toward a phone-like annualized upgrade rhythm, foreshadowing convergence devices — a direction already floated in the unconfirmed Sony Ericsson PSP phone reports from June 2007.
- Video-out blurs the line between handheld and home console, pointing toward a Sony platform strategy where one device serves both contexts and the PS3 becomes the hub it docks against.
The trend: Handheld consoles are entering a mid-cycle refresh cadence where hardware tweaks and media-output features, not new generations, sustain platform momentum between true successors.