Sony again mentions possibility of PSP hard drive from next year

Last July, Sony Europe boss David Reeves gave some insight as to the reason behind the omission of a hard drive in the redesigned PSP but mentioned that it wasn't something that remained entirely ruled out, particularly with memory costs continually falling.

"The only thing I would say is that the flash memory is simply so cheap – you can get an 8GB Memory Stick for under 100 Euros, and on 8GB you can get a lot of content," he now added, while speaking to industry site gi.biz, as one of the reasons Sony has been reluctant to include a hard drive.

But he was quick to point out that it's something that clearly hasn't been decided internally yet. "I think the big debate is – there's a point in time when you have to put a stake in the ground and say we're going to go with flash memory or we're going to go with hard drive. I don't think they've put that stake in the ground just yet.

"So they're thinking about it - I think they'll get through Christmas and think about what the next step would be," he continued. "You might hear more later."

Reeves also confirmed that despite announcing a trio of services for PSP at the Leipzig Games Convention (namely Go!Messenger, Go!Explore and Go! video download service), Sony's focus for the handheld needs to be games – which we entirely agree with.

Picking up on comments he made in July about repurposing PlayStation Network games such as Calling All Cars for PSP, he again stressed the likelihood of more titles found on PSN to find their way onto PSP – they might be shorter but that would be counterbalanced by their originality, argued Reeves.