Well, here it is, folks. After months of speculation and rumor, prior to E3, we’ve got leaked photos of the newest incarnation of Sony’s PSP system, dubbed the PSP Go! And surprise surprise, it flips, just like we all imagined it would. Engadget has the skinny on the leak, as well as a photo gallery and some video. Read on after the break for first impressions.

Honestly? I’m a bit underwhelmed. It looks like an overgrown mylo, without the keyboard. There’s nothing in it that says to me I must replace my old PSP with it. It’s still got the same terrible analog nub, same amount of buttons. And the placement of the analog nub horrifies my hands already–I can already feel the cramping and the accidental dropping of the device. It’s lighter and has Bluetooth, and they’ve abandoned the UMD drive… but I’ve still got a sizable collection of UMD games for my old PSP.

It’s great they’re announcing an online store to sell games electronically, but these days, everyone I know has memory cards in excess of 4GB. Did we really need a new piece of hardware to facilitate this particular consumer need? What was the problem with continuing to integrate the PSP into PS3 functionality? Wouldn’t it be cheaper for people just to buy a new Memory Stick and stick with the old PSP than shell out for a new console?

Sony seems to want to run the Go! in tandem with the PSP, as if one device somehow won’t compete with the other, because of how revolutionary and different each is from the other. Frankly, I don’t see it.

(via Engadget)