Sony has confirmed that it will launch an online PSP store that makes use of the handheld's wi-fi capabilities.

Details are still scarce, but speaking at yesterday's Gamers Day SCEA's president, Jack Tretton, said, "I think the advent of a long awaited and quite frankly long overdue ability to deliver a downloadable service for the PSP will help us out a great deal. Hopefully we'll have it out there by the fall."

Tretton is no doubt praying that the service will “help [them] out a great deal.” As SPOnG reported earlier, Tretton's been sweating corporo-speak about the PlayStation division's woes.

Although downloadable PSP content has been available via the PS3 since December, this will be the first time a handheld platform has had a self-contained download service.

Last month James McQuivey, a Forrester Research analyst, expressed his confusion as to why a download service is not available already. "The Sony PSP is one of the best portable entertainment media devices that anyone has come up with in years”, said McQuivey, “It has a relatively big screen, plays video beautifully, has good storage and audio. It could have been the first big mobile carrier for TV shows and movies."

It's a bit late for that now, with the advent of video on the iPod, but the PSP Store will certainly take the handheld one step closer to being the multimedia platform it was always touted as.