Sony has recently commented for the first time on the PSPgo’s battery. Speaking via the newly-launched European PlayStation blog, SCEE product manager Adam Grant said “”We have adopted an embedded battery to realise a smaller and lighter PSP system. The battery life is equivalent with the current models meaning approximately 3 to 6 hours for gameplay and approximately 3 to 5 hours for playing back videos.” Confirmation, for those of you wondering, that you can’t remove the PSPgo’s battery.

While you might expect PSP battery life to improve with each new model, Sony argues that retaining an equivalent battery life is a step in the right direction given that the battery itself is smaller. As someone who caries a spare PSP battery for long trips, that irks me a bit, but it’s a compromise I’m probably willing to make.

In other PSPgo news, SCE’s John Koller said in a recent interview with Gizmodo that Sony was “in the midst of putting together a goodwill program” for consumers wishing to purchase the PSPgo with existing PSP UMD libraries. “We’ll be unveiling that soon [because] we actually think there’s a significant group that will be upgrading from the [PSP] 1000… In the past we’ve seen a 20-25 per cent trade-up factor, and I assume that’s going to be the case here.” As the PSPgo doesn’t feature a UMD disc drive and only allows for gameplay via downloaded content, you can imagine a few nasty e-mails might make their way to SCE HQ if such a program wasn’t launched. Hopefully “goodwill” means free free – having to pay to play games you already own on the PSPgo would be fairly ordinary. We’ll have to wait and see.

It’s seems unlikely that a UMD-to-digital program will be rolled out before the portable’s October 1st European and North American launch.

This news comes as rumours circulate on Joystiq and Destructoid that Sony is preparing to launch a section of the PlayStation Store (available for all PSP models) specifically for third party PSP applications. Similar to Apple’s App Store for iPhone and iPod touch, rumours say applications could cost between USD$2 and USD$6 with a maximum file size of 100MB.

For more on the PSPgo, including a run down of the system’s features, specifications and my personal impressions, see the recent article PSPgo – the good, the bad and the ordinary.