PSP 3000 battery life will be fine after all

It's been a quite a week of rumour and correction. First Belkin denies the JoyPod for the iPhone is actually in production (which we're quite sad about), then Sony's hardware marketing director John Koller takes to the PlayStation Blog and backpeddles on his comments about the PSP 3000 having a "20 to 30 minutes shorter play time".

It was a fairly innocuous comment buried under a heap of marketing praise for the PSP's imminent hardware update, but the media's ears pricked up when he clearly explained how the new, brighter screen would inevitably take a toll on the system's power. Evidently, when he said the battery wouldn't last as long, he was actually stating that it would

One quick backstage wrist-slapping later and John Koller is back and telling us Sony's stalwart engineers have worked diligently to ensure the PSP 3000 will now boast exactly the same playing time as previous models.

"I'd like to make a correction and clarify that the new PSP will have equivalent battery life to the current PSP, about 4 to 6 hours for games and about 4 to 5 hours for UMD videos," Koller believably reports. "While the enhanced screen of the new PSP draws a little more power, our engineers in Japan worked to reduce the power consumption of the overall system including its components, so you won't have to worry about losing any time when enjoying the more vibrant visuals displayed with the new PSP."

Good news all round, so long as this second report holds true under user tests. Now if we can just get Sony to backpedal on the European PSP 3000 costing around £50 more than its Japanese counterpart, it'll be a happy day indeed.