New PlayStation Takes Limelight at Electronics Show

By Stephen Williams

It's sleek and trim, a rectangular black box that resembles, more than anything else, an overgrown digital camera. Rather innocuous looking, in fact, but it contains the huge potential to reshape a segment of popular entertainment in 2005.
Sony's revolutionary PlayStation Portable -- to be called PSP now and for a good part of forever, until a PSP2 arrives -- was formally unwrapped Wednesday, and promptly stole the pre-show buzz hours before the official opening of the Consumer Electronics Show.

The new PSP will play sophisticated games, as well as music, movies, video and nicely mimic a color photo viewer. But one of the more revolutionary aspects of the device might be its price. While none was announced, Sony America Chief Executive Howard Stringer said it would cost less than $200 when it's released in the United States in late March. "The most remarkable value in home entertainment," said Stringer, who certainly hopes it is. "I shudder to think what it will cost early on, on eBay."

Kas Hirai, president of Sony Computer Entertainment, said the new PSP takes entertainment "out of the handheld gaming ghetto."

PSP was launched in Japan Dec. 2, and has since sold 510,000 units.