TOKYO--Following complaints by consumers in Japan, Sony Computer Entertainment officially announced that it will repair any PSP suffering from a defective square button. According to reports, a manufacturing defect caused some units' square buttons to stick when pressed and not pop back up.

Sony released a statement that said the problem affected only about 0.6 percent of the 510,000 PSPs that were shipped during 2004. The company assured gamers that the manufacturing problem has since been solved, and PSP units shipped after the start of 2005--all those that will go on sale in the US on March 24--will not suffer from the problem.

Owners of a Japanese PSP with a defective square button should send the unit to Sony's repair service, which will fix the machine for free. Details on the PSP swap are available from the official Japanese PlayStation site.