PSP Phone to be officialy announced February?

I’m sure at least some of you must recognise this thing by now. Since being leaked a few weeks ago this picture of the supposed “PSP Phone” has been the talk of the online gaming community, with the predictions, rumors and comments both positive and negative too innumerable to even begin to transcribe here. The first official word from Sony about the matter was a denouncement of the photos authenticity, a position that was suspiciously replaced with the generic “no comment” response once journalists started asking questions and has stayed that way since.

Just as this information lock down was beginning to finally starve out the Internet rumor mill of any usable dirt on the device, it looks like Sony Ericsson Chief Executive Bert Nordberg decided to unsubtly spill the beans about it’s existence in an interview with The Wall Street Journal.

“There’s a lot of smoke,” tells Nordberg “and I tell you there must be a fire somewhere,”. Other little gems that will no doubt see Nordberg having a stern talking to by Sony’s PR department include: “Sony has an extremely strong offering in the gaming market, and that’s very interesting.”  “Sony is of course a very strong brand, and why shouldn’t we use that?” and “Gaming, including content, is a very interesting proposition.” all the while berating currently available smart-phones as not “optimised for gaming”.

And if all that wasn’t enough to send every self appointed industry analyst (such as myself) rushing for the nearest forum with their latest theories, Nordberg also added that he wanted to make some “noise” at the February Mobile Word Congress expo in Barcelona with a new product. Finally a semi official confirmation of the devices existence? Or possibly the biggest wind-up in industry history? I guess come February we can find out for sure, then we can all go back to speculating about the PSP2 instead.