News from Sony Japan indicated the honeymoon period following the release of the PSP Slim & Lite is showing no signs of a slow down, with a massive 580,000 units being sold in less than a month.

A combination of the special edition Crisis Core PSP Slim & Lite launched on the 13th September and the standalone unit launched a week later has topped over half a million total sales.

Things are looking up for Sony and the PSP. The PSP Slim & Lite is creating a stir, and the heavily anticipated Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core has sold 470,000 copies in just one week in Japan.

A triple coup then, is the news that almost 100,000 PSP units were also sold, beating the number of Nintendo DS Lite units sold in the same timeframe.

Yet another day and yet another PSP firmware update. Version 3.7 is now available from the usual place.

Custom themes, button assignation when using remote play are added with 3.7, along with support for listening to music and browsing pictures at the same time.

Sony has issued a press release apparently indicating the slimmed down PSP-2000 aka (Slim & Lite) is now available worldwide. However early reports seems to show that distribution channels are a bit clogged, with patchy availability.

Those that are getting their hands on the new unit, for a variety of pre and post tax prices, seem happy so far.

Actually, as the versioning indicates, since the last reported PSP firmware release on UMD Talk, there have now been two small updates.

PSP firmware 3.51, available at the end of June and briefly reported on in news of the PSP Slim apparently running 3.6 firmware, brought a small security patch while 3.52 expands support for PLAYSTATION®Network titles.

Joystiq has reported that at least early versions of the new PSP Slim will run on Firmware version 3.60.

After months of speculation regarding a PSP 2 and/or an second edition PSP, Sony has finally announced the release of the PSP-2000 aka "PSP Slim" at E3 2007.

The new PSP Slim unit is essentially functionally the same as the original, whilst weighing in 33% lighter and 19% slimmer. The PSP Slim has dropped from a portly 280g to 189 and gone from 23mm to 18.6mm thick.

The end of May brings a new PSP firmware update, with version 3.5 now available for download.

Aside from an RSS channel guide, the only notable addition with PSP firmware 3.5 is support added to allow the PSP to access content stored on the PS3's hard drive via Wi-Fi.

The PSP 2 rumour mill has started again, with Lazard Capital Markets analyst Colin Sebastian hinting at a "refresh" of the PSP hardware.

Sony has announced over 50 new titles at the Sony Gamer's Day across the PlayStation family of consoles, with more than 20 titles for the PSP.

The 21 new PSP titles in no particular order: 

SOCOM US Navy SEALs: Tactical Strike, SCEA
Syphon Filter: Logan’s Shadow, SCEA
God of War: Chains of Olympus, SCEA

Sony has announced a new Entertainment Pack combo to augment the first Memory Stick + Movie pack released back in July 2006.

The new pack combines a 2 GB Sony Memory Stick Pro Duo with a DVD containing 4 movies, with the user being able to choose just one of the titles to transfer for use with the PSP.

Ken Kutaragi, the chief architect of Sony's PlayStation gaming console has announced he will step down in June of this year.

Kutaragi held the post of chair and group chief executive at Sony Computer Entertainment Inc and will be replaced by Kazuo Hirai.  Hirai's is currently president and chief operating officer of Sony's Entertainment division.