PSP-3000 battery life fine after all

The curvier, brighter new PSP will not have a shorter battery life than its predecessor, according to Sony's US hardware marketing director John Koller.

His comments will presumably come as a surprise to Sony's US hardware marketing director, John Koller, who told GameSpot last week that "battery life will decrease by a small amount...about 20 minutes, maybe 30 minutes".

Not so, says John Koller, who corrected that statement and declared: "the new PSP will have equivalent battery life to the current PSP, about 4 to 6 hours for games and about 4 to 5 hours for UMD videos.

"While the enhanced screen of the new PSP draws a little more power, our engineers in Japan worked to reduce the power consumption of the overall system including its components, so you won't have to worry about losing any time when enjoying the more vibrant visuals displayed with the new PSP."

This will certainly put the evil John Koller in his place, after the Sony man told GameSpot that the reduction in battery life was "going to be offset because we're going to have the extended-life battery that's still available for consumers".

Thanks goodness for John Koller!

The PSP-3000 is due out in the UK on 17th October for GBP 149.99 as part of a bundle of unspecified make-up. There are also European bundles for EUR 199 going out on 15th October (Clank pack) and in early November (4GB Memory Stick pack).