PSP to support MP3s

The day after Sony said it would embrace the world' s top digital music format, it appears on the official PSP spec sheet.

On Thursday, Sony announced that its next generation of music players would support MP3s. This was a reversal of a long-standing policy by the company of having all but a few machines solely support its proprietary ATRAC audio format.

On Friday, it was revealed that Sony' s new policy will also extend to the PSP. Besides playing games and movies, Sony had previously announced the device will also play music encoded in ATRAC format. However, today on the official Japanese Sony PSP spec page, the device is clearly listed as supporting the " MP3" format as well as ATRAC.

Besides the contentious issue of its still-unclear battery life, one of the biggest questions surrounding the PSP was whether or not it would support MP3s, the de facto standard format for digital music. Now that it does, the PSP will be much more attractive to gadgeteers eager to take their burgeoning MP3 libraries on the go.

By Tor Thorsen -- GameSpot

I personally prefer ATRAC since it' s better but the inclusion of MP3 playback should make others happy :)

ATRAC is better than ATRAC3. ATRAC3 is the super-compressed format Sony uses on recent Minidisc models to get more than 80 minutes on a disc. ATRAC is the format used on regular Sony MiniDiscs (up to 80:59 per disc) and an 8-channel version of the same thing is used in theaters and is known as SDDS (a currently failing cinema digital sound format). ATRAC is cool on MiniDiscs, but the PSP won' t play MiniDiscs. In fact, why does the PSP need to play anything? If it plays MP3s, I also expect it to have a built in camera and cell phone. They are including so many things on this unit. Next thing you know they' ll figure out how to get this thing to play videogames!

Yeah damnit, that’s all very well and good but why would I want a music playing, all singing and dancing portable PS2 thingy that will probably cost more than an actual PS2 (now) on release? You are right Joe, why *does* it need to play everything? Gawd I hope this goes the route of the PSX and fails. Sony need a slap to realise we don' t want these multi-functional devices which cost the earth. I just want a console that shock-horror plays games!