PS3 keypad pushed to December

At this year's Leipzig Games Convention in August, Sony was in no short supply of hardware-related announcements. Along with taking the lid off its latest PSP redesign, Sony provided launch details on the 160GB PlayStation 3 and gave European audiences an expanded look at PlayTV, a digital video recording service. The publisher also unveiled a new wireless keypad for the PS3, saying the device would arrive by the end of November.

Those plans have apparently hit a bit of a snag. As part of the cavalcade of speakers at the BMO Capital Markets Interactive Entertainment Conference today, Sony's vice president of sales, Ian Jackson, confirmed that the keypad will surface sometime in December. When contacted by GameSpot, Sony confirmed that the keypad will now begin arriving on retailers' shelves during the first week of next month.

When it arrives, the rechargeable wireless PS3 keypad will snap onto either the Sixaxis or DualShock 3 controller, and features a touch pad mode for mouse input. Among other uses, the keypad will play a role in Sony's forthcoming PlayStation Home service, where gamers can use the device to text-message friends.

Curiously, Sony also announced that, over the last couple of months, it has launched its eight-year-old PlayStation 2 in Argentina, Chile, Columbia, and Peru. Sony expects to roll out the aging system in several other South American countries, including Brazil, Uruguay, and Paraguay by spring 2009.