Will Sony Take on the 3DS… or the iPhone?

Sony’s first handheld gaming system is six years old. That’s one year older than tradition tells us is the average life of a game console.

The industry has been waiting and watching for Sony to announce a true successor to the PSP, but so far, nada. So in place of actual news, there’s always rumors and speculation to fall back on. If the Move motion controller has taught us anything, it’s that Sony has slipped into imitation mode (Move is essentially Wii HD, even down to its near-identical-to-Wii remote controllers). So the question becomes: with the next-gen PSP, will Sony target iPhone or Nintendo’s upcoming 3DS?

One rumor last week suggested that the PSP2 might be a hybrid phone and gaming device, a la the iPhone, but built on a heavily-modified version of Android 3.0, and might be available as soon as October. This same report claimed that PSP2 versions of God of War, Modern Warfare, and Little Big Planet are already in the works.

Today, the rumor du jour is that Sony‘s new device will have a touch-sensitive area on its back, though no one seems to know if this means the back of the device will double as a touchscreen, or if it’s some new mode of control. It’s also said to be the size of the original PSP, with plenty of room for slots for stuff like flash storage, and might even include physical media — a possible indication that Sony might be abandoning its recent direction of download-only mobile gaming.

Since Gamescom Europe is currently taking place and Sony has yet to make an announcement about the PSP2, it looks like we still have some waiting to do. So… heard any good rumors?