Here's some links to some hands on previews of the hardware unit itself:
Hardware Hands on
Gamespot
IGN
Play Asia
Lik-Sang
As you all know one of the PSP's strong points is it's media facilities, here's a round up of the capabilities of Music, Movies and Photos on the go:
MP3 Information
QUOTE
For managing files, the PSP supports a folder structure like mid- or high-class MP3 players. For example, you can throw a bunch of classical tunes into a folder named "classical" and also throw in a library of rock tracks under another folder named "rock" and then switch between playlists at will. The PSP also supports m3u playlists, so you can arrange your tracks in the order you prefer.
That sort of MP3 support is a welcome addition in my books, especially the ability to structure with folders and playlists. Not everyone has an MP3 player but suddenly it's in the realm of a lot more people. You can dump the Music straight onto the MS Duo in a card reader or connect the PSP via a USB cable to your PC. What a good time for a pic:
Photos and Movie support (Memory Stick):
It's a similar story with Photos and Movies as it is with MP3s, a variety of formats are supported:
Atrac3plus
MP3
JPEG
MPEG-4
(I believe more as well such as BMP and PNG but I'm not sure, watch this space for updates)
Atrac3plus will probably be used for any music bought in Sony Online music stores, if you wish to play these on the PSP (Protected Atrac3 songs) I believe a MS Duo with MagicGate technology is required. This is only for playback of protected content, regular MS Duo's (and Duo Pros, Pros being faster) work perfectly in the PSP with full support for all unprotected content.
Video
Regarding video support via Memory stick, Sony will be updating their conversion software called "Image Converter", this is currently used to convert video to play on Sony's Clie range of PDAs. A Beta of version 2 will be out just after the Japanese Launch (Dec 12th) with added support for converting video to the PSP. Here's a breakdown (albeit in Japanese) of the amount of video at varying qualities you'd get on a 1GB MS:
In the highest quality mode you'll get over 4 hours of video on a Memory Stick which the battery will outlast according to various hands on impressions of the unit where battery life has been tested. For the majority of people who'll be wanting media on the move (count me in there
) a 512MB stick will do and at standard quality you're getting close to 4 hours of content on that Memory stick (just enough for RoTK: EE 
)What better way to make use of the glorious 16:9 widescreen LCD on the unit:
This picture fully demonstrates the 2 directions Nintendo and Sony have gone with their handhelds. 2 smaller screens VS 1 huge widescreen, your choice:
Just as we were all familiar with the XMB (Sony PSP operating system) interface, the units sneaking out have a new red tint to the menu system. This is actually based on the calendar with each month having a different colour, check out some photos:
PSP XMB Menu colour change
Importing
First things first, if you haven't pre-ordered a good few months ago and you want one this year, you're probably out of luck. One of the few ways to get one is overpriced units on eBay in a week or 2. In my opinion it's not worth the potential downfalls and I myself will be waiting until the US and UK launch which will be happening in March 2005. Sony have themselves confirmed that games will be multiregion which is good news for all us handheld fans used to Nintendo treating us so well.
The same can't be said regarding UMD movies, they're broken down into regions in the same way DVDs are; so the US is region 1, Japan and the UK region 2 etc. My personal opinion is that movies on UMD will flop dramatically, especially considering the ease in which someone can buy the DVD and dump it on a Memory Stick to play on the PSP. But at the same time I image every PSP owner will buy 1 UMD movie, 99% likely that it will be Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children as well
Games
Reviews are slightly scarce at the moment, with only Famitsu (well respected Japanese Magazine) having scored some games for the PSP launch:
QUOTE
Ridge Racers (PSP, Namco): 8 / 10 / 10 / 9 - (37/40)
Minna no Golf Portable (PSP, Sony): 8 / 8 / 10 / 9 - (35/40)
Dokodemo Issho (PSP, Sony): 8 / 8 / 7 / 7 - (30/40)
Armored Core: Formula Front (PSP, From Software): 8 / 7 / 8 / 7 - (30/40)
Kotoba no Puzzle Mojipittan Daijiten (PSP, Namco): 8 / 7 / 8 / 8 - (31/40)
Minna no Golf Portable (PSP, Sony): 8 / 8 / 10 / 9 - (35/40)
Dokodemo Issho (PSP, Sony): 8 / 8 / 7 / 7 - (30/40)
Armored Core: Formula Front (PSP, From Software): 8 / 7 / 8 / 7 - (30/40)
Kotoba no Puzzle Mojipittan Daijiten (PSP, Namco): 8 / 7 / 8 / 8 - (31/40)
The surprise of the lot there for me is Ridge Racers, 2 perfect 10's, a 9 and an 8 (each game is reviewed by 4 people, each marking out of 10) is shockingly impressive and I imagine that's a must have (although not reason enough for me to import a unit).
Other games I'm looking out for are Hot Shots Golf (Minna no Golf Portable, 35/40), Ridge Racers of course and a game called Mercury. Mercury will be a UK launch title and is created by Archer Mclean who created who developed all the top quality Cueball games for PC and consoles. The concept is simple, a blob of Mercury inside a maze, a tilt sensor and you tilt the PSP guiding the blob of Mercury to the goal. Starts of simple, then you get different colour Mercury and coloured switches. This sounds like it's going to be addictive and frustrating at the same time
here's some more information:Mercury at IGN 1, Mercury at IGN 2
Here's some links to various PSP games I think are of note:
Ridge Racers, Hot Shots Golf, DarkStalkers, Lumines (puzzle game from the same team that brought us the amazing Rez on DS and PS2), Tiger Woods PGA Tour (whether the control system will match the DS's awesome touch control swing action is yet to be seen), GT4 Mobile, Metal Gear AC!D, Wipeout Pure.
Retail Packages
The PSP comes in 2 flavours, the plain vanilla PSP which comes with the Demo disc and the, um, nothing... which is priced at ¥19,800 (~$180) and the Value pack which includes the PSP, remote control, PSP headphones (iPod alike as well, I bet that's no accident!), carry case (gotta protect that beautiful screen), carry strap and 32mb MS Duo; that's priced at ¥24,800 (~$235). The decision is yours, personally I'll be going for the value pack, I'll be throwing an extra battery pack as well.
Battery Life
This is almost a taboo subject and one which hasn't been covered as much as it has. The most common misconception though is "...the PSP will have 2 hours battery life...". This is simply false, the worst figures quoted so far were 4-6 hours for gameplay with simple games such as Lumines eeking out more battery life and games like GT4 Mobile (and I imagine Ridge Racers) hitting the bottom end of the scale (around 4 hours gameplay).
Other functions take varying amounts of battery life, the MP3 being the least greedy with up to 10 hours MP3 playback with the screen off. From hands on impressions we have foudn out that playing a UMD movie (one of the movies on the Demo Disc) continuously with the screen on at full brightness gave 4 hours and 20 minutes of battery life. That's extremely good in my opinion, constant disc access and full brightness whilst dencoding a MPEG4 encoded movie sounds pretty strenuous so it's pleasing to hear it last that long; far more then a comparable portable DVD player (in my personal experience) and far more pocketable!
Hopefully I've caught a nice little chunk of info, feel free to add whatever, more hands on, links to game impressions etc and I'll update the first post
hopefully it wasn't too boring a read and don't forget to vote , just to keep the levels of interest up, here's another photo to keep you salivating 
Update 1
Hands on impressions of the battery life is coming out:
MP3 playback - 9-10 hours
UMD video playback - 4-5 hours
Ridge Racers - ~5 hours
It's looking good to me!
Wipeout Pure Movie (Right click save as)
Update 2
PSP Europe launch details starting to become apparent, SCE Europe had a press day on the 9th December to start gathering pace for the Europe launch, they displayed 9 games that will be available on or around launch:
Games Preview Part 1
Games Preview Part 2
Games Preview Part 3
The 9 games on offer were:
WipEout Pure, Formula One, WRC, Ape Escape, Hot Shots Golf, Ridge Racer, World Tour Soccer, Fired Up and MediEvil.
Also announced was the (hopefully copied again and again) feature of custom soundtracks, Formula One (not the obvious choice for a custom soundtrack) will have the ability to pull music stored on your memory stick to use as a custom soundtrack in the game!
surely they wouldnt miss an opportunity like this?
