Sony Pulls Extended Life Battery, Probably Due to Piracy

This week Sony announced that they will be discontinuing sales of their popular 2200 mAH extended life battery. The new battery increased the playtime of the PSP by as much as 50%, but it necessitated a slightly bulkier plate on the back of the PSP slim in order to accommodate the battery’s larger size. Some PSP owners reported getting more than 10 hours of play time out of their PSPs with this official replacement.

There are a number of possible reasons for the cancellation. Perhaps users are satisfied with the battery life from the standard pack that comes with the PSP-2000, and sales of the accessory have slowed. Another, more likely reason is that Sony wishes to fight piracy on the system by creating a new, un-moddable battery. Pirates have been able to gain access to the system by creating modified versions of the battery called “Pandora” batteries.

We doubt that pulling the extended battery from shelves will have a noticeable effect on piracy, since there are already thousands of these batteries floating around in the wild. We hope that whatever plan Sony has for the PSP, they continue to find ways to increase the portability of their device.

The extended battery came with two back plates to accomodate the smaller size of the PSP Slim.