Rumor Mill: Sony Didn't Allow Sony Ericsson to Develop a PSP Phone

The PlayStation Portable isn't getting quite a lot of attention these days, as its arch rival, the Nintendo DS, is registering massive sales while it is barely struggling to keep a decent profit for its parent company, Sony. The low interest in the handheld console is due to the fact that game developers have realized that it isn't profitable to make software for it because it will most likely end up being pirated, despite Sony's great efforts in order to decrease the high rate of hacking on its portable device.

That is why some time ago the rumor of a PSP phone appeared, supposedly being made by Sony's mobile phone label Sony Ericsson, which has been the result of a pretty old partnership with the European company. But things it seems aren't going so well, as inside sources have told 1up that the Japanese corporation denied its European counterparts the rights to use the PSP as a platform for a future phone.

It would seem that, although the Sony Ericsson engineers devised a presumed concept, Sony has denied them the rights to use the brand of the PSP, presumably because the Japanese company wants to develop a phone on its own, without the help of the Ericsson team. Although this would point to the fact that the two companies aren't getting along so well, the mobile phone manufacturer claims that Sony still wants to wait until the proper technology will appear in order to make the PSP phone a worthy concept.

Let's not forget that these are still rumors and that Sony Ericsson is still claiming that it “could not comment on what Sony has or hasn't said.” A representative for the company also added that “In the past, we have been keen that our product proposition lives up to brand promise, and we feel at the moment the technical specs are not high enough to put such a prestigious brand on a phone.”

Although the rumors of a new PSP have been dismissed by the president of Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, David Reeves, this feature might arrive in a new iteration of the handheld console but until we know for sure, this is just a rumor and PSP owners are still going to have to carry a mobile phone with them.