Poor Japanese PSP owners. They've been so used to being ahead of the technology curve for so long now, but when Skype was so suddenly delayed for the region they sadly had no choice but to wait. It seems that the headset related problems have no been solved, however, as Japan finally gets to sink its teeth into the VOIP service this month. A new firmware update will arrive on the 18th of March and will enable the service on Japanese machines - handy for those of us with Japanese import consoles.

The news of Skype's imminent arrival comes alongside an announcement of the new PSP microphone attachment. This will be released on the 19th at a price of 2,500 yen each (or 4,000 yen for two) and will plug into the USB socket on the top of your PSP, allowing you to chat with your other Skype wielding friends from all over the world. The press release states that the microphone is identical to the one that came with Talkman so we're curious to find out what the reason for delaying Skype rollout was. Still, it's all done and dusted now and we can look forward to chatting with our Japanese PSP owning friends in two weeks time.