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In a shock unveiling during its E3 press conference in the last couple of hours, Sony, via the legendary Ken Kuturagi, has unveiled PSP - the PlayStation Portable. Making use of a revolutionary 60mm optical disc based in a Mini-Disc-style casing, the storage format (known as UMD or Universal Media Disc) will find use not just on PSP but across a broad range of Sony products. All of which caused Kuturagi-san to label PSP: 'The Walkman of the 21st century.'

Each UMD can hold a massive 1.8Gb of data - roughly three times the size of a PSone disc, and the chipset is apparently able to create graphics far in advance of PSone. Which means it would also trounce GBA SP and Nokia's forthcoming N-Gage, performance-wise. And PSP will further be able to playback a whopping two hours of FMV at DVD quality.

Big Japanese third-parties are reportedly already clamouring to work on the

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system (shock), and first dev kits are due to be shipped this Autumn with the machine itself set for general release by the end of 2004. And yes, as a handheld, PSP will be multi-region out of the box.

In terms of design, we have absolutely no idea what PSP will look like, save that Sony will be implementing a Dual Shock-style control layout, which, considering Dual Shock is probably the best, all-round joypad there is, suits us just fine.

Taking a lead from Nintendo, possibly the most exciting aspect of PSP is its connectivity. With Sony's position and experience in the world's electronic entertainment market, the potential for linking up with countless devices is obviously staggering and could well change the face of gaming as we know it. Certainly, Sony will doubtless ensure PSP is fully compatible with PlayStation 3, but via PSP's USB port, connection to PS2 cannot be ruled out either.

And rather than memory cards, PSP will make use of memory sticks which will be transferable between numerous applications.

Well, there we are. It was always going to happen. Now it has. Does this mark the end of Nintendo's handheld hegemony? It's still far too early to make that kind of prediction, but its likely to be a cause of concern for the Mario creator, at the very least.

And now Sony has let the cat out of the bag, will Microsoft follow suit? More questions than answers at present, but this is a massive announcement by anyone standards.