Eurogamer got to play first with the pre-release sample of the new hardware PSP Go with an unreleased firmware revision: 5.70. Reading the pre-review of the prototype seems and sounds negatively, but still we can wait for an official review when it hits on October.
Here are some of the featured changes of new firmware version 5.70:
- Network Update is now listed as System Update, but, curiously, has the same options.
- Video Settings obviously doesn’t have the first four UMD-related toggles.
- System Settings now has a “Your Birth Date” option (second from top), and a “Display Panel Close Option” toggle, which allows you to set it to either “Standard” (goes to a clock graphic) or “Enter Sleep Mode”. Also “Battery Information” seems to be gone, as do UMD-related options, but there’s a “Format System Storage” option in addition to the usual Memory Stick format option.
- Power Save Settings loses the “Backlight Auto-Adjust” option for some reason.
- There’s a new “Bluetooth Device Settings” entry, which consists of a toggle for switching Bluetooth on and off and a “Manage Bluetooth Devices” entry.
While on the hardware side here are the disappointments,
- PSP Go apparently has just a 3.5mm headphones jack and doesn’t support microphone headset.
- PSP Go uses newer M2 Memory Sticks not compatible to older version.
- 14.74GB of user-accessible storage is formated in FAT32, meaning there’ll be a 4GB file size limit.
- Require all new video cables and changed little things like the AV port.
It’s still a mystery if this prototype version will ship on October 1st when it hits US and Europe; either we hope not cross-finger.
