Fudzilla readers have known about the PSP Go for some time and Sony made it official today at their press conference, joking about the number of leaks of its existence prior to the announcement.

We got the specifications right, but the price tag of $249 is going to give many a serious case of sticker shock when compared to the PSP-3000, which goes for $169 in the current core pack offering. While the features might make it worthy of the price bump, it is still a lot of money when compared to the previous PSP-3000 in the core configuration.

It is unclear as to what games will exactly ship at launch, but Grand Turismo for PSP will not be one of them. While it is in the pipeline for a release later this year, it will not be available when the PSP Go launches on October 1st in North America and Europe. Another surprise is that the PSP Go will not launch in Japan till November 1st and when it does, it will cost 26,800 yen, which is $280 in U.S. dollars.

As for the look of the PSP Go, it does seem to offer much more in the way of styling and abilities than the previous PSP. Don’t chuck those older PSP units away just yet, as Sony claims that titles will continue to available on UMD for the older units. We will have to see how the public responds, but the $249 price tag did seem to catch a lot of us in the media off guard.