Speaking at a roundtable luncheon in New York earlier today, Sony’s John Koller revealed that the PlayStation Portable will finally receive its long-awaited keyboard peripheral. According to Koller, Sony’s director of hardware marketing, it should arrive within the next 12 months.
At at panel discussing casual, free-to-play and ad-supported games at the 6th Annual Wedbush Morgan Securities Management Access Conference, Kohler explained that both the keyboard and the upcoming GPS attachment are part of a new focus on social gaming:
There’s a lot of things coming with PSP, particularly with some of the peripherals, that really speak to where I think we see our vision with the PSP… We see mobile communities… we see this being a lot less of a ‘PlayStation Personal,’ which is what people called it at the beginning, and much more of a ‘PlayStation Social.’
For an example, Koller explained that Sony might consider letting PSP gamers find one another using the GPS attachment. “You know where your friends are located on the GPS — maybe they have Madden and I have Madden, and we want to be able to play in kind of a LAN setting or ad-hoc — that’s a very powerful thing and it brings people together,” he said.
Koller added that the GPS will also “parlay well into gaming,” and that developers are currently considering possible GPS integration with their titles.
Though the formerly Japan-only GPS is being converted for US use, Koller said that the 1seg TV Tuner will not see a stateside release.
Gizmodo has pictures of the new GPS attachment, and reports it will retail between $100 and $200.
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