Rumour: PSP 2 is ‘just over half as powerful as the PS3’

IGN is reporting that the next generation PSP will be one seriously high-tech handheld.

According to unnamed sources, the device is about as half as powerful as a PlayStation 3, and is “packing enough processing hardware to produce graphics comparable to early PlayStation 3 titles.”

Blast those graphics through the handheld’s squat few-inch screen instead of a 1080p television and you’ll have some pretty jaw dropping graphics, says IGN.

Tthe graphical parity will allow developers to port PS3 games down to the handheld with little tinkering, and even allow you to start games on PlayStation 3 and then continue your save on the bus with your PSP 2.

That’s all under the hood, of course. On the outside of the console you’ll find concave style twin-thumbsticks. It will have the same slider style design of the PSPgo, but the whole handheld has bulked up a bit to accomodate the extra thumbstick, more beefy innards, and slightly larger touch screen.

There’s a touch panel around back, which lets you do gesture-style motions in games for extra input functions. You could swipe across the back of the handheld to reload or activate your car’s boost. It also sports two cameras (one on the front, and one on the back), but no physical media drive - it’s all downloadable from here.

All this information goes along with rumours, patents, and leaked photographs we’ve seen before, and comes from “someone with direct hands-on experience with the forthcoming handheld.”