Sony's made a series of confusing statements about the release window for its PSP successor, currently dubbed Next-Generation Portable (NGP), a name that will likely change next month at E3.
It's unclear whether NGP will launch worldwide in 2011, but in an earnings call today listened in on by Phile-web and translated by Andriasang, Sony told investors it still planned to release NGP sometime in 2011.
"Regarding NGP, we're progressing with preparations towards a release at the end of the year," said the company.
'kay.
That leaves all sorts of questions on the table, obviously. Can Sony pull off a worldwide launch before the end of the year? If you don't launch NGP in all regions before 2011 is up, you've essentially given Nintendo a year-long headstart on the latest set of dedicated gaming handhelds. Given 3DS sales are off to a slow start, the distance between them may not mean as much.
All of this assumes, naturally, that Apple hasn't swallowed much of the handheld landscape.
We'll know more at E3.