Industry Veteran Says PSP 2 Could Launch This Fall

Dave Perry, industry veteran and chief creative officer at the reinvented Acclaim Games told video game blog Kotaku that a successor to Sony’s [SNE] PSP is real and could arrive as soon as this fall.

"I spoke to a developer who is working on it right now," he said. "I know this developer is already working on it, so that means they have a prototype. That would sound like a fall release to me."

Perry implies the new PSP iteration will lose the UMD drive in favor of digital downloads via PC or direct to the handheld via Wi-Fi. "I've been pounding on Sony for a long time to make the PlayStation Portable relevant and not to let Apple [AAPL] stroll away with the portable game market," he said.

While saying Apple is or will stroll away with the portable game market may sound like a stretch (it is: Nintendo’s DS has a firm grasp on the market with an installed base of 96 million), the iPhone/iPod touch maker is definitely making an aggressive run at the market with constant print and TV ads for the devices, touting their gaming capabilities.

Sony is clearly at a crossroads if there’s any truth to Perry’s digital download statements because a big chunk of retailers’ margin comes from game software. The rise in digital downloads could mean the proliferation of PlayStation Network cards and/or Memory Sticks preloaded with content.