The PSP Go is due to launch in just over a month. It is going to be the first version of the PlayStation Portable without a user-replaceable battery. Now why could that be?



Well, you can blame the pirates. No, not the ocean-sailing types, the software-stealing ones. Both the PSP-1000 and PSP-2000 models were susceptible to a hack known as the Pandora Battery. The 3000 model wasn’t so easily duped into running illegal copies of software and homebrew, however. SCEA’s John Koller had this to say about why the PSP Go will not have a removeable battery:

“We’ve had a lot of success with the 3000…You won’t be able to rip your games and play them on the system, the firmware precludes that…There’s no external battery, so there’s a number of protections put into place on the system.”

So it sounds like Sony’s newest handheld will be much more protected against hacking. The downside though is that when your battery eventually stops working, you won’t be able to do a simple battery swap to continue playing on the go.

[Source]