Kutaragi comments raise fresh concerns over PSP battery

Speaking in an interview with Japanese site Impress PC Watch, Sony Computer Entertainment boss Ken Kutaragi has admitted that graphically intensive game will drain the PSP's battery more rapidly than the quoted figures.

"A puzzle game will last longer, but Ridge Racer will probably be shorter than that," he told the site, referring to the battery life statistics released by SCE last week - which claimed four to six hours of battery while playing games.

The figures quoted by SCE rely on playing with headphones, without using the wireless multiplayer capabilities of the device, and with screen brightness set in a specific range - leading to widespread speculation that using the full power of the system will bring the battery life down closer to the originally rumoured two hour level.

Kutaragi's comments seem to confirm that games which use the features of the console more intensively will drain the battery life faster, and are backed up by the firm's efforts to restrict developers from using features such as data streaming from disc (as used in a large number of PS2 titles) due to their high power consumption.

The SCE boss was adamant, however, that the battery life problem would be solved in future - telling the interviewer that "in the future, we'd like a single charge to last for a flight between Narita [Tokyo] and New York" - a fourteen hour trip.

He cited the Sony Walkman as an example of battery technology progress, pointing out that the device had started off with an exceptionally short battery life. However, he stopped short of saying that the company plans to upgrade the battery technology in future revisions of the PSP, instead focusing on the possibility that developers will find ways to optimise their games to use the battery life more efficiently.

The implication is clear, however, and Kutaragi's comments will undoubtedly be taken as a tacit admission that there is a problem with the PSP's battery life - and that the firm may be hoping to fix this in a later revision of the hardware.

Whether this problem is likely to scare off early adopters or not is a major question - but Sony is certainly being conservative in its shipment estimates for the device. Reports today indicating that the company expects to ship three million units of the device in its financial year, compared with Nintendo's projection of four million units of the similarly-priced Nintendo DS console, citing this as the ceiling of its production capacity for the system.