Now you can enjoy Rock Band while on the road to your next gig. That’s because the game is coming to the Sony PSP. To celebrate, Sony is releasing a limited edition Rock Band Unplugged PSP Entertainment Pack.

You get a piano black PSP-3000, a 4GB Memory Stick Pro Duo and a PSN downloadable movie voucher for School of Rock. Very clever. Rock Band Unplugged will merge some key gameplay elements from the original Rock Band as well as its sequel, with a bunch of new songs and some features that are unique to the PSP. Like loneliness and isolation.

We’ve heard all of the rumors that a new PSP will be arriving with a sliding touchscreen, but now Pocket Gamer says they’ve confirmed it with a developer working on the system. It will be here before Christmas.

The source repeats earlier rumors about the design: Like the touchscreen that will slide open to reveal a D-pad and….two analog thumbsticks. And as we told you before, the UMD will be gone in favor of digital downloads. According to Pocket Gamer it’s more like an iPhone than the last PSP you’ve come to know and love.

Looks like SCEE is prototyping a new addition to the PSP PlayStation Store. According to a tipster, Sony is planning a service that will let you download digital comics directly to your PSP. Survey participants were asked to watch the video below and to help determine a pricing scheme: subscription or a la carte prices.

Digital comics aren’t new to the PSP, like the Metal Gear Solid comics for instance. The interactive comics were enhanced with slight animation, music and even sound effects. The PlayStation Store currently only has one digital comic available for download: The Cryptics, which will cost you $2.99.

According to Acclaim developer David Perry, the new Playstation Portable won’t feature a UMD disc drive.

“I hear Sony FINALLY has the PSP 2. And thank goodness, they’ve removed the stupid battery-sucking UMD disc drive. I’m excited!” Perry wrote on both his Twitter and Facebook accounts.

Whether or not he has actually seen the rumored new Playstation Portable himself is not clear. He may just be hearing rumors through the development community. Ditching the UMD wouldn’t be a surprise as it would cut costs and make the device slimmer. It fits with the other rumor, that the new PSP will be a slider, but have the same guts as its predecessor.

If you haven’t found a PSP color to suit you, you might want to try a female color, like this new Lilac PSP aimed at girl gamers.

This Lilac PSP will debut as part of a $199 Hannah Montana Entertainment Pack that features Miley Cyrus’ PSP game, a UMD with some Hannah Montana episodes, a 2GB memory stick, and some stickers. What about us males? An Assassin’s Creed Entertainment Pack will launch with Altair’s PSP debut later in the year with “other content that will announced later.”

What are the odds? There’s a rumor floating around on the internet. And it involves the PSP. That’s never happened before… Sarcasm aside, this latest rumor predicts an actual lustworthy design that includes a sliding screen and yet no new hardware inside.

If true, that means it’ll have the exact same internal guts as your current model, it will just be more cellphone-like. On one hand, i’d be glad they upped the design and payed attention to various fan renders like the one above, but what good does that do you if the innards don’t match?

Sony claims to have sold 50 million PSP handhelds worldwide as of January 2009. That number includes all PSP-1000, 2000, and 3000 devices sold since December 2004. That’s a pretty impressive number, for sure.

But not so much if you’re sitting in Nintendo’s corporate offices, looking at 96.22 million DS handhelds sold between December 2004 and December 2008. I guess since they can’t brag about how many PS3 units have been sold, they have to have something to give them hope.

Times are tough and Sony knows that if it wants to sell PSPs(Believe me they want to sell some badly) they had better try some new tricks to entice buyers. And what could make the consumer want you more? Sony thinks that it’s all in the colors.

Sony is releasing the European PSP in three new colors to compliment the Carnival Colors we covered just a week ago. You’ll be able to get your PSP in Radiant Red, Mystic Silver and Pearl White. They might be trying a little too hard. Those color names sound like stripper names for Eighty-year-olds. In fact, I’m pretty sure Pearl White starred on The Golden Girls.

The PSP is cool and all, but like any other device, it’s outer shell is boring. Gametech has the answer and wants to glam up your PSP with a set of protector cases coming out that make your portable look like a work of art. The designs are the bright patterns of Japanese woodcarvings and traditional paintings.

Their new line’s name translates to Wasabi Beautiful Colors and they come in durable hard covers, flexible soft covers, and gauze capsule cases that make your PSP look like it was wrapped. They’ll be available in Japan at the end of the month, and they’ll probably hit other countries soon after.

Check out this creative marketing campaign for Sony’s PSP gaming console. Have you seen one in your neighborhood? I’m guessing no, since this is actually a concept for a PSP campaign made by a fan. But how cool would it be to spot a transparent PSP with a Tie Fighter, or even Spiderman in the background. Hit the link for more pics. Sony needs to hire this guy at once.

The good news is that the PSP-3000 has a new brighter screen that gets rid of a lot of the older PSP’s ghosting, but the bad news is that there’s a price to pay. Some PSP owners are reporting at the official PlayStation forums that their PSP-3000 suffers from really bad interlacing defects during video playback AND gaming. That means that there are nasty visible jagged edges and scanlines on anything that’s moving. According to Joystiq, turning off the Wide Color Space option helps. We can only assume that Sony is in the process of investigating the problem.

Some of us think that the PSP could do with a major overhaul instead of just minor updates and upgrades. Designer Tai Chiem certainly thinks so, which is why he has taken it upon himself to unleash this radical concept on an unsuspecting world.

The idea is that the Sony PSP 2 is a small cylinder lightsaber deal with a flexible OLED display that can be rolled out when needed and rolled back when not being used. The electric charge that juices the display would stiffen it. It also sports stereo speakers on both sides. The design also supplies two joysticks, something PSP fanboys have been wanting. Sadly it will never happen, but it’s great eye-candy.

After having an early coming out party, the PSP-3000 Ratchet & Clank Entertainment Pack had it’s official launch today and the brighter PlayStation Portable is now available in North America. The bundle will cost you $199.99, while the economy black PSP-3000 kit with just a 4GB Memory Stick will be available next month. The silver pack will be available in all European countries except the UK a day later on October 15. EU countries will also have to wait for the black bundle in November.

The PSP-3000 is set to launch next Tuesday, but someone jumped the gun. The PSP-3000 Ratchet & Clank Entertainment Pack has made it’s way into at least one Best Buy early, where some lucky guy snatched it up and took this mug shot.

Some guy(Presumably Disco Stu from Springfield) made himself a retro, light-tastic PSP that suggests that Disco is either coming back or that the timeline has been altered and Sony has now created the PSP in 1977. The flashing Disco lights will definitely distract you from any game and get the attention of gamer ravers. The whole system consists of 30 LEDs all linked to the sound output and set to pulse in time with the music. I wonder if the modder heard whispers that said, “If you build it they will come”. They, being the Bee Gees. Video below.