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We may be feeling sour about the PSP Go’s hardware, but its software may end up putting a smile on our faces. According to Pocket Gamer, the upcoming handheld’s downloadable PlayStation Network (PSN) games will be priced at €1, €2 and €5 apiece ($1-$7), bringing them to the level of titles from Apple’s App Store for the iPod touch and iPhone. They also claim that Sony have been actively courting iPhone developers, in the hope that they will port their existing titles over to the PSP Go.
However unlike Apple, Sony will demand not only stricter technical testing – including a two week long “quality assurance” period – but control over when games are launched. This seems to be a throwback to the traditional games publishing model, and it remains to be seen whether developers prefer it or the perhaps more esoteric Apple process.

By reducing the cost of individual titles, Sony are obviously hoping to capture some of the casual gaming market that has buoyed the Apple App Store. The PSP Go is set to hit shelves in the US and Europe on October 1st.

The problem with quoting your “insider” at Apple – or any company for that matter – is that somebody else can come along and quote their own, seemingly higher-placed insider back at you. Daring Fireball’s John Gruber has taken Gizmodo’s Brian Lam to task on some of the Apple Tablet “leaked details” published this week, and the phrase “So Lam’s source is an “insider” but has no idea what the OS is and has the ship date wrong. Sure” gives a good indication of how legitimate he thinks it is.

Gruber’s key complaint is that his own sources are telling him it won’t be until 2010 until the Apple Tablet arrives, which doesn’t tally with Lam’s insider. That timescale is also shared by Jim Dalrymple, as we reported yesterday.

That given, and considering Lam’s source also doesn’t know what OS the tablet is running, is enough for Gruber to write-off the information. Of course, it’s entirely possible that Gizmodo’s insider might have little or nothing to do with the hardware side of the tablet, and instead be on the marketing or design side of the project, in which case the gaps in knowledge might be more readily explained. Still, we’re unlikely to find out until late in 2009 at the earliest and – if the current mood pans out – more likely early 2010.

Fresh Samsung ultraportable tidbits for you today, with the news that not only will the company’s N510 NVIDIA Ion netbook be shipping in the US come September, but that it will be the first of three models to use the GeForce 9400M GPU. According to documentation acquired by Netbook Choice, the N510 will be joined by the Samsung NP-N511 and NP-N508.

Details of the two new notebooks are unknown; however it’s speculated that the N511 will use a different Atom CPU while the N508 might drop down a size-point and have a 10-inch display. Release dates are similarly unknown.

As for the N510, according to Liliputing that will begin shipping in September with a $599 MRSP. The ultraportable – which has an 11.6-inch 1,366 x 768 display, HDMI port, Intel Atom CPU and 160GB hard-drive – is expected to land in Europe this month priced at €499 ($707).

It’s been a few months since we last heard Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster’s opinion on Apple’s much-rumored tablet, so happily the always-opinionated man is back with not only some pricing, sales and hardware predictions, but a slick render too. According to Munster, his sources in Asia have tipped an unnamed manufacturer winning the contract from Apple to produce the touchscreen device, with fulfillment at the end of 2009; that, he says, underscores his previous assertions of an early 2010 launch.

As for sales, Munster is buoyant about the Apple tablet’s success. He expects – like most other people – it to cost between $500 and $700, and to sell better than the Apple TV did in its first year. He also tips an integrated 3G modem, with either A&T or Verizon the likely carrier partners and potentially subsidizing the device. In fact, Munster predicts it will sell around two million units in its first 12 months of availability, generating $1.2bn and adding around 3-percent to Apple’s revenue stream in the 2010 calendar year.

That’s strong performance for something Gene describes as similar to an iPod touch, only larger, although he does suggest that it will have access not only to most of the existing 70,000 App Store titles but “a new category of apps designed for the bigger screen.” He also believes it will compete with netbooks – being primarily for internet, email and digital media access – but not actually be a netbook, thus not contradicting Apple’s various enthusiastic denials that they have any intention of entering the budget ultraportable space.

Next Monday Apple kick off their 2009 Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), and first thing on the schedule is one of the most eagerly anticipated keynotes of the year. Apple is expected to announce a new, third-generation iPhone, and SlashGear will be live-blogging the whole keynote from 10am PT on Monday June 8th 2009.

Amid the speculation there’s talk of a front-facing camera for video calls, an FM transmitter for squirting music through your car stereo, and a higher resolution camera. We’ve just seen what are purported to be leaked photos of the new iPhone, which show off the tweaked casing and shifted headphone port; there’s also talk of three different iPhone models, with varying degrees of data connectivity tailored to different markets, in multiple colors.

Whatever gets announced, SlashGear will be there when Phil Schiller takes to the stage on Monday and we’ll be using our homegrown no-refresh-needed Live Blog system to bring you all the details.

Is this a photo of the new iPhone? It’s a question we’ve asked surprisingly few times over the past couple of weeks, given the proximity to Apple’s WWDC on Monday (which SlashGear will be live-blogging at http://live.slashgear.com/) and the spate of rumors throughout May. Now, a Spanish site has released what are claimed to be shots of the upcoming model, complete with shifted ports, new controls and a tweaked chassis.


As well as a different shape to the casing, and an apparent matte finish as has been rumored, the “leaked” photos also show a fascia redesign with two slots at the top of the handset. There’s also a discrete LED indicator embedded in the front panel.

The headphone socket has also seemingly moved, from the top edge of the handset down to the bottom as on the iPod touch, and there appears to be a button on the lower right-side edge of the handset that, given similar controls on other cellphones, could be a camera button. The lower slot on the fascia could be front-facing camera, its been suggested, with the LED an indicator as on the iSight webcam embedded into MacBook notebook displays.

We’ve seen multiple Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs) over the past week, as Computex brings the latest hardware out of the woodwork, but is the whole endeavor an exercise in futility? According to sources at manufacturers, sales of Intel-based MIDs have been just 30,000 units, far less than Intel’s own predictions of 150,000 to 200,000 units.

The sources have suggested that global purse-tightening in the face of a middling economy and “slow-building popularity” of 3G applications are to blame for the significant shortfall. Intel was pressured to sell Menlow platform chips, initially expected for MIDs, to netbook manufacturings to recoup its investment.

Intel have declined to comment on the sales speculation, as its official Q2 results are imminent, but has re-stated its belief that the MID segment - and other internet-focused devices - has great potential and will remain a target. The company revealed more details of its next-gen Moorestown platform this week, which will likely ship in 2010, and be aimed at MIDs. It also revealed five hardware designs, with screens ranging in size from three to five inches, that would be among the first to deliver Moorestown.