Sony's PSP Go gets Going

By Shane Craver on October 1, 2009

Smaller, lighter and all-digital is the marketing bullet points for Sony's revised Playstation Portable gaming console.

The much-awaited new version of the PSP will be hitting stores in time for the holiday shopping season.

The main innovation for the PSP Go is the all-digital distribution for games on the system. It is the first gaming console to forgo discs, cards, and cartridges and opt for only downloaded games through the system's WiFi or Bluetooth connection.

Jesse Divnich of Electronic Entertainment Design and Research told USA Today, "Ten or 15 years from now we are going to look at the PSP Go as that first product to really introduce the core gaming market to digital distribution."

The previous version of the PSP relied on clunky "UMD's", which were mini, sheathed discs. Sony had hoped that the UMD format would catch on but they lost out on that bet.

The PSP Go features slide out gaming controls combined with an accelerometer and a 3.8-inch screen. The system comes with 16 gb's of Flash storage and 64 mb's of memory. Games can be downloaded from the Playstation Network over a USB cable, Wifi (albeit a slow 802.11.b connection) or tethered Bluetooh.

It's selling now for $249.