PSP battery life worries reinvigorated by Kutaragi comments.

Many gamers breathed a muted sigh of relief last week, as Sony Computer Entertainment released the proposed battery life expectations for it’s PSP handheld console. Their figures stated an expected charge duration of four to six hours, which blew away worries that the number could be as low as a frankly disgraceful two hours. However, the gaming world can now re-furrow its collective brow in concern, with some revealing comments made by SCE boss Ken Kutaragi in an interview with a Japanese computing website.

Speaking to Impress PC Watch, Kutaragi admitted that a graphically intensive game will drain the forthcoming handheld’s battery at a faster rate than a less demanding title. “A puzzle game will last longer, but Ridge Racer will probably be shorter than that”, said Kutaragi.

The SCE boss was insistent, however, that these problems will eventually be solved, stating that “in the future, we’d like a single charge to last for a flight between Narita and New York”. These are, indeed, ambitious words, given that such a flight lasts in the region of fourteen hours.

While he failed to directly confirm it, the general consensus is that this means that SCE plans to improve the battery technology of the PSP in a later revision. Either that, or the unlikely possibility that developers will be able to further optimise their software, to the extent that they will be able to decrease the demand on the console by almost a factor of four.

Another worry that arrives with this announcement is that early models of the hardware will be rendered almost obsolete if and when SCE improve the battery life of the PSP, which could potentially impact early sales. This is reflected in Sony’s projected sales for the console, which state that they expect to ship three million units within the financial year, which compares unfavourably to Nintendo’s projection of four million units for their similarly priced DS console.

We will be following this story as it develops.