Originally posted on February 27, 2009

Again and again, over the past few months, we heard the PSP labeled as dying and, in some cases, already dead. Of course, Sony kept saying, "No it's not. Just wait until 2009!", but hey, we hardened gamers can recognize a line when we see one, right?

Turns out it wasn't just a line. Now the future of our beloved handheld seems pretty bright thanks to the announcement of a whole slew of big PSP titles that are all supposed to come out this year.

Software:

• LittleBigPlanet, Rock Band, Assassin's Creed, and MotorStorm: all coming to the PSP this year. Oh, and Hannah Montana too. Link.
• The first game to be detailed was Rock Band: Unplugged. Link.
• John Koller was in the news as well, revealing a few details about the new games:
• LittleBigPlanet will stick to create, play, share tenet. Link.
• Assassin's Creed a completely different game, unique to the PSP. Link.
• More AAA games to be announced in the months leading to E3. Link.
• Monster Hunter is popular in Japan. Too popular, in fact, that there's talk of another new PSP Monster Hunter game. Link.
• Sony is also courting Ready At Dawn for another go at PSP programming. Link.

Hardware:

• Hardware-side, rumors of a new PSP are still going strong:
• PSP-4000 incoming with new sexiness, sliding screen. Link.
• Shiny Entertainment's David Perry says the PSP2 is real and it won't have a UMD drive. Link.
• And here's John Koller's take on Perry's big reveal. Link.
• Europe's Go!Messenger service is shutting down, but the upside is that there are new features coming for Go!Cam. Link.
• And did you know that there's now a skin disease named after the PlayStation? Link.
  

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This is it, boys and girls. Now that we know what to expect in the coming months, the waiting starts, and everybody knows that that's the hard part. So what do we do to pass the time until the AAA titles start rolling in? Keep playing, of course!

There are a few good titles coming along in March, most notably Resistance: Retribution and Phantasy Star Portable. You can keep tabs on what comes out when by checking out our weekly On Shelves post on Sundays.

If you're rocking a homebrew-enabled PSP, we have new homebrew release posts all the time on the QJ.NET PSP blog. There's also our Tuesday and Friday specials: the QJ QuickGuide and QJ.NET How-To, respectively. And of course, don't forget the QuickPeek and the Weekend Warrior every weekend.

Well, that's all the space we have this week. See you guys again next weekend for another issue of the PSP Weekend Warrior.