A few hours ago at Gamescon, Sony announced a new PSP model for Europe customers, codenamed “E-1000”, which will be sold for exactly 99 euro.

Although the price cut sounds nice, this new model loses the Wifi, which to some players was an essential feature of the previous models. I’ve seen lots of people using the Wifi features here in Japan, but it is probable that Sony did a market study and realized Wifi was the best thing to remove in Europe to cut the price.

Some stores announce a release date of end of October (October 26th), under the name “PSP Street“, probably in reference to the lack of wifi (if you use the device outside of your home, which is probably a major use case for a portable console, there’s a high chance you don’t have access to a wifi spot).

This very competitive price makes the PSP a good choice for people who won’t want to spend 300 euro on the PS Vita (scheduled in Europe for early next year).

Is it really a good deal?

This looks like a good marketing move to target “super-late” adopters and fill the gap until the PS Vita comes out, but let’s mention however that the PSP Go can easily be found for a similar price in many stores in Europe. The PSP Go is more compact (which means a slightly smaller screen, but also that it actually fits in a pocket), and has 16GB embedded memory ( if the PSP Street has no embedded memory, it will cost you 50 euro to get the equivalent on a memory stick…), bluetooth, Wifi, and an integrated microphone to use with skype.

But the good point of the E-1000 over the PSP Go is UMD support, and this is in line with the price cut: UMD games can now be found used or new at very low prices, unlike their digital counterparts (/irony/ ’cause, you know, with all the distribution prices involved with digital products, it’s perfectly normal that digital goods are more expensive than physical ones…). So again, people who will want to benefit the PSP’s second life will probably like this product… but I’d still personally recommend to get a psp go instead.

I’d actually recommend to get a psp go and an old psp 1000. Use the PSP 1000 to rip your UMDs and play them on your psp go 🙂 This way you get both the cheap prices of UMDs and the qualities of the PSP Go.