The Japanese Business News website Nikkei says PlayStation Portable Lite will get Skype. Sony has teamed up with eBay’s Skype to make PlayStation Portable Lite an Internet communications phone, offering free outbound calling.

It arrived last September with hopes to give the sagging PSP sales a shot in the arm. Sony released a slimmer, lighter version of the PlayStation Portable, dubbed PlayStation Portable Slim and Lite.

The new PSP is not only 19-percent slimmer and 33-percent lighter, it also has a few key hardware improvements. It sports a slimmer, lighter LCD screen and some improvements in its Wi-Fi modules.

However, as the name implies, the Slim/Lite is no tank. This new version has the original PSP’s protective metal chassis removed. But, load times for Sony’s UMD discs are faster on the new version which many PSP fans considered a much-needed improvement.

Skype, now owned by eBay, will make a special version of its Internet communications software available to PSP Lite users later this month. It will allow the new PSP to make free outbound phone calls when connected to the Internet via Wi-Fi. If you subscribe to the Skype service for a modest price of about $20 for a three-month term, the Skype service will also provide you an inbound phone number.

After Friday’s report from Nikkei, Sony declined to comment on the specifics of a deal with Skype.

Tags: Wi-Fi

This entry was posted on Monday, January 7th, 2008 at 11:09 am and is filed under Gaming, Portable. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.