Confirming one of the more concrete rumours from last week – made all the more believable by the fact that Sony had itself mentioned it on its own CES page – Sony is demonstrating its upcoming Skype update for PSPs. A new firmware upgrade, expected to be arriving later this month, will include a full Skype system allowing for PSP to PSP calls, PSP to PC calls and PSP to normal phone calls as long as you have Skype credit, which you can purchase direct from the PSP software.
As we suspected, the arrival of Skype heralds a new peripheral, which Sony was demonstrating a prototype of. The new headset has a tiny boom mic and the ear pieces fit over the ear rather than in the ear like the normal set of buds. The new headset will be arriving at the same time as the firmware update and the Sony rep informed me that there is actually nothing stopping third party peripheral manufacturers from making their own Skype PSP headsets at the same time.
The major drawback is that PSP Skype is only compatible with the Slim and Lite PSP 2000 series, which has the enhanced RAM and processing power. How Sony is going to ensure that only PSP 200s receive the Skype firmware upgrade remains to be seen.
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oh good then, I guess my kid will be asking me to pay via credit card for Skype credits to call his friends.