Even with all of its woes, Sony still has time to announce a new product for the PSP. To be fair, these new PSP-branded earphones don’t have anything to do with the PSN outage. Another fair point to make is that Japan has been a lot more accepting of the PSP than North America has. Assuming that Japanese consumers aren’t still upset about the PSN data theft, they may want to pick up their very own PSP earphones on July 21, 2011.

Marcus Rivers is, or perhaps was, Sony’s spokesperson for the PSP. As the handheld continued to lose steam, Sony needed a new audience to sell the PSP to. It was tough to convince the typical hardcore gamer (who wasn’t into hacking), to buy a PSP so far into its life cycle. Sony then decided to market the PSP to a younger audience. To do that, Sony enlisted Marcus Rivers.

The NGP is no doubt the successor to the PSP. Though PSP support from a lot of developers has slowed to a crawl, not everyone will move on right away. The PSP will remain in stores after the NPG launches, just like the PS2 did once the PS3 took over. For at least a short period of time, the PSP and NGP will live in harmony despite their massive differences in hardware and software.

The PSP2 has been the subject of rumors for the past several months. There hasn’t been any definitive proof about anything that has been said about the handheld. Some developers have said they’ve already seen the PSP2. Images of a possible development kit were leaked a while back, but no other pictures have been shown. Sony is said to be revealing the PSP2 on January 27, 2011 from Tokyo. We all want to know how powerful this device is. We’ve heard it’s as strong as a PS3 before, but shrugged off those allegations. The CEO of Codemasters now says those claims are accurate.

Following up on yesterday’s report about the January 27 private reveal of the PSP2 comes more rumors of a release window and launch plans. MCV’s sources say Sony is set to start a promotional blitz for the PSP2 not long after Nintendo fully reveals the release plans for the 3DS outside of Japan. The handheld is expected to be released in the latter half of 2011 between October and December.

This week’s downloadable PlayStation 3 game is Costume Quest complete with a candy craving monster and, for for PSP, the PlayStation Portable Download is DJ Max Portable 3 with more than 40 unique tracks and tons of unlockable tracks and features.

This week’s PlayStation Plus feature is Tomb Raider: Underworld game trial free to members only. For a limited time players can follow Lara Croft as she searches for the final resting place of King Arthur but runs into an old enemy, Jacqueline Natla who tells her that Avalon and the Norse Helheim are one in the same. Players must help Lara solve puzzles and find the artifacts of Thor in Tomb Raider: Underworld…