According to a reportedly credible source, Sony is working to develop the PSP2 and will make it without an optical disk drive. Not that it will have some other kind of optical disk drive, the handheld will just be UMD free.

Sony is also radically redesigning the PSP. The new iteration of the handheld will feature a sliding screen that will be in form of a PSP-4000, not a PSP 2. While commenting this alleged change that Sony plans to make, Acclaim video game designer, David Perry, made a post on his Twitter account about the fact that the new device will not have an optical disk drive anymore.

"I hear Sony finally has the PSP 2," developer Perry wrote on Twitter. "And thank goodness they've removed the stupid battery-sucking UMD disc drive."

Sony did not comment of this and Perry did not mention the source of the information. However, the removal of the UMD drive certainly makes sense and would solve some important issues for the PSP 2 such as the slow load time and short battery life.

Earlier this month, several video game publications wrote that Sony’s PSP 2 will feature a hard drive, multi-touch screen and built in GPS. In other rumor news, Sony is reportedly in negotiations with a United Kingdom-based hardware manufacturer to design the graphics chip for the new PSP.