Has Gust's Mana Khemia: Student Alliance been delayed? There has been no confirmation from NIS America yet but that seems to be the case, sad as it may be. More after the jump.

Want to maximize your gaming experience with Sony's PlayStation Portable? Well, we have good news that will you guys jump for joy. GameStop has released a special coupon on the web which lets you save up to 25% on PSP games and UMD movies. Learn more about the coupon after the jump!

Those who are waiting for their fix of courtroom drama (mixed with a dose of Adult Swim acid) on their Wii, PS2, and PSP are bound for a disappointment: it looks like Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law by Capcom for the Wii and PSP is going to be delayed, according to the game's release dates in two different online retail stores.

Online store Amazon lists Harvey Birdman's release date as January 8 next year, while EBgames has January 1, 2008 as Harvey Birdman's shipping date. Of course, both may simply be placeholders for the actual dates, but what happened to its previous November 13 release?

Will Harvey Birdman join the league of delayed games such as Super Smash Bros. Brawl? Do check this space to find out.

If this post from retail chain EBGames is correct, fans of aerial combat simulator games will have another title to look out for on January 1, 2008 in the form of Heroes of the Pacific. Yep, it seems that the critically-acclaimed PS2 game from IR will be making an outing on the PlayStation Portable.

We checked the title's official site if the developer or even publishers Codemasters and Ubisoft have updated it but unfortunately, the companies have yet to do so. Allow us to speculate a little though in saying that this is not at all an impossibility. It is common practice for video gaming companies to bring PlayStation 2 games to the shiny handheld and vice versa.

Heroes of the Pacific, like we said, is an aerial combat simulator game and delves around WWII. It begins during the attack on Pearl Harbor, with players taking the role of pilot William Crowe. Battles will include famous, or even infamous, Pacific campaigns in Iwo Jima, Philippines, and Wake Island among others.

As much as we would like this one to be a reality, we're putting this one under the Rumor tag for now. As always, updates as we get them!

 

How much did you like Medal of Honor: Heroes for the PlayStation Portable? We asked because we might be getting the sequel in the near future if EBGames' placeholders come true.

We've found not one, but two placeholders (as you can see above) for Medal of Honor: Heroes 2. One is on EBGames' PSP page while the other one is one the Wii page. Hmm... Very interesting. We reported a few weeks back about the sequel getting a placeholder on GameFly, but that's only for the PSP version.

We checked the interwebs further and found two placeholders on Amazon for the said sequel. Amazon and EBGames seems to agree on the tentative release date: November 6, 2007.

Well, let's all cross our fingers and hope these really do come out as the placeholders predict. In the meantime, we'll file this under the Rumors bin for now while we wait for solid confirmation from Electronic Arts. Stay glued.

A lot of people have been waiting for Polyphony Digital and Sony Computer Entertainment's Gran Turismo 4 Mobile on the PSP. Yes, there are great racing games like Burnout Dominator, but many gamers have been demanding more racing games to sate their need for speed. Unfortunately, GT4 Mobile may not be out until next year.

EBGames, one of the leading distributors of video games in the US, has listed the game's pre-release copies to ship only on January 1 of next year. It's been said that other sites such as Amazon UK have listed the game for a later date, like March 30. This leads to a little confusion considering other sites such as Yahoo shopping and others have set the game for this year (or maybe they just haven't updated their site yet).

That said we have no other choice but to wait for Sony's official statement on when this game will be announced. However, considering the issues they are dealing with now, their response may come later rather than sooner. Be sure to keep checking back here for more updates in Gran Turismo 4 Mobile for the PSP.

Thanks to Networkgamer for the heads-up on this one.

 

As confirmation to the EBGames and GameStop price drop sightings, the official word from Sony claims that the price tag has dropped by US$ 30 all over North America, making the U.S.-only word CVG got from Sony extends its horizons over Canada. So if you check a couple of Canuck EBGames retail stores there, you'd find that the PlayStation Portable CORE package is also now available at a modest US$ 169 tag.

Lazard Capital Markets noted that in Black Friday just last year, a Wal-Mart discount promotion sporting the same price of US$ 169 was able to reel in greater sales. They claim that this proves the demand for the handheld actually exists, although it is price-sensitive.

Sony, however, is not only hoping that the PSP would garner a modest gain in sales for after the price drop. They are also hoping that the line up of popular franchise titles, such as Ratchet & Clank, Syphon Filter and God of War, will also help the PSP sell like hotcakes. Gran Turismo for the PSP, coming in the second half of 2007, is also expected to boost unit sales in the near future.

Colin Sebastian of Lazard Capital Markets hopes to breathe new life into the PSP marketing campaign. They are planning an online and print campaign for young adults and teens, besides gamers-on-the-go. "In terms of software, we believe hardware price cuts can positively affect game sales with an expanding installed base as well as additional foot traffic in retail stores," said Sebastian, concluding:

It is too early to conclude whether Sony's pricing action will cause game developers to increase the pipeline of new PSP titles; however, several publishers publicly called on Sony to lower the PSP price and broaden the consumer end market. At the new $169 price, we note that the PSP is still $40 higher than Nintendo's DS.

In a bid to increase sales of the Sony PSP handheld system, GameStop and EBGames have both slashed the retail price of the PSP Core Pack by US$ 30. The Core Packs, which originally sold for US$ 199.99, are now priced at a more desirable US$ 169.99.

While all of this is good news for those who want to score a PSP in North America, it seems that the price drops are not yet a worldwide phenomenon. According to CVG, there's still no UK price drop for the PSP in sight. CVG also reports that a Sony representative told the gaming news site that the price drop is "a U.S.-only thing" at the moment.

Retailers have already asked Sony to start giving the PSP price drops due to dismal sales figures for the system last year. Early March saw moves by Sony to start reducing the price of its handheld system, with PSP Senior Marketing Manager John Koller revealing that Sony is in the process of reducing parts and potentially adjusting the size of the PSP all together.

A few month's ago, QJ blogger Gino D, promised that we'd give you future updates regarding the supposed release date of Polyphony Digital's Gran Turismo 4 Mobile for the Sony PlayStation Portable. Of course, why wouldn't he, given the game's Duke Nukem: Forever - esque history of changing release dates. As promised here's an update. QJ reader, Networkgamer alerts us of something interesting going on over at the EBGames site.

As of this writing the EBgames listing for Gran Turismo 4 Mobile looks like so:

 

Oh well, a move from from July to November ...sigh. We're betting that a few months from now, we'll get word of another schedule change. Of course, you can't discount the possibility that EBGames is just yanking on our chains ...or something. Since there isn't official word yet, we'll tag this as a rumor for now. As always, we'll keep you informed as soon as more info is made available. Stay tuned.

 

Regardless of what the semi-anonymous Mr. Tummy had to say about the PSP game list looking dry, the set of titles coming out for the PSP this year is still very, very compelling.

Given EBGames' recent dissing of the PSP, we felt that now would be an appropriate time to present that much tauted PSP upcoming list to you folks. But before we give you folks the list, we have to note that because this blogger is a bit lazy, a lot of games got left out of the list, meaning that the list of titles available for your PSP could still be potentially deeper than this.

What follows are the reasons why PSP owners are still loyal to the Sony handheld.

Get the list of must-wait-for games after the Jump.