Rumor Mill: The PSP-4000 to Sport Sliding Screen and New Exterior

The PlayStation Portable is a pretty popular handheld console, oriented, as opposed to its arch rival the Nintendo DS, to hardcore gamers who want new features all the time. That is why there has been a huge amount of speculation regarding the next project that the Japanese electronics company has in store for its flagship portable consoles.

Whether they were about the next version in the current lineup, dubbed the PSP-4000, or about a completely new model, entitled the PSP2, which would sport a number of interesting features, present in one way or another on the market, like an iPhone-esque multi touch screen, or the possibility of combining the PSP with its bigger brother, the PlayStation 3, in order to record game sessions or even act as a real-life peripheral for it, helping you in various minigames or other endeavors.

Now, it is VG247's turn to throw some gas on the speculation fire, as it has quoted a “highly trusted” source inside Sony in regard to the fact that the project currently in development is about the PSP-4000, a new version of the current lineup of portable consoles. The source confirmed the speculated 2009 release date, saying that we might get a chance to see it at the upcoming Game Developers Conference or at E3 this year.

The source also mentioned that this project would be a completely aesthetic overhaul, saying that the hardware of the future console would be almost the same as the currently available PSP-3000. But don't worry, as it seems that this look revamp will most likely include a sliding screen, which will be used for a lot of new things. 

Although the image we used is only a concept, it seems that the engineers from Sony might have based some of their ideas on it. Hopefully we will get to see a concrete announcement from the Japanese company and finally take this piece of news out of the rumor mill.