I'd happily pay $500 for it, but I seem to be in the minority there.  I mean, that's what I paid for my last smartphone (no contract) and this looks to be quite a bit more powerful than any smartphone.

Eh, from what I played I thought it was pretty easy.  I can't really complain since it was stuck on easy mode, but I honestly would have preferred something harder.

Using UMDs would be completely moronic at this point.  The capacity of a UMD is pretty limited by modern standards.  Maybe they could have tried to make a whole new UMD-like optical drive with blu-ray densities, but flash cards just make more sense for a portable system.

As far as game announcements go, the system is still pretty far from its release date.  I wouldn't worry too much.  I would worry about getting a bunch of ports and not many original games, though...especially with all the talk about how easy it was to port PS3 games to it.

The Uncharted game, at least, was supposed to be an original entry in the franchise.

Thoughts on the demo:

Presentation, style, and atmosphere are basically perfect.  Even the menus are great.  Interestingly the music seems to incorporate themes from a lot of well-known classical music.  I really like how Holst's The Planets was used in the first stage.

The gameplay, though?  I'm still not sold.  As we suspected it's basically a timed puzzle-platformer.  Actually more puzzle than platformer, as movement is strictly locked to a grid.  Most of the challenge stems from trying to arrange blocks as fast as you can so that you can keep climbing, while snagging money and stuff for bonuses.  It worked well enough in the demo, but there just didn't seem to be that much depth to it.  I can see it getting old.  Of course, only easy mode was available in the demo.

Unfortunately, at least in the demo you never got the chance to move around the Stray Sheep bar.  The only thing you actually controlled were two stages of the platforming and a brief stint with the email system.  The email system is kind of interesting.  You just press a button on your control and Vincent writes a line, but then you can also delete a line and then rewrite it in different words, etc.  Kind of how people actually write things, except you don't know what he's going to write until he does it.

In conclusion, I still want the game but I'm still not sure how much I'll actually like it in the long run...

Downloading it now.

You seem to be ignoring people who have a PS3 and not a 360, Dice.

Well, it sounds like a pretty minor component.  Something to screw around in after you've beaten the game.  Why not?

Is it local-only?  That's what the description seems to indicate, anyway.

Stop adding to my list of games I need to buy!  I have enough of a blacklog as it is ;)

That would be awesome, if true.

...though honestly part of me was actually looking forward to tackling it in Japanese.  It's an enjoyable way to practice.

Uh...you know you need to hold the switch for a while to actually turn it off, right?

I'd be pretty shocked if the 3G was free, but that doesn't mean it will be required.  To me it just seems like an obvious thing to have as an option.

Yet it actually sold pretty well initially.  Sales died off later only due to the lack of good post-launch games.

I don't disagree about iPads mostly being a status device.  They seem like a complete waste of money to me, but the fact remains that they do sell.  And the PSP2 has the potential to have all the same basic capabilities.

But why shouldn't a portable device cost as much or more than a home console?  In the realm of consumer electronics smaller has always meant more expensive, all other things being equal.  By the way, the PSP launched before the PS3 and was certainly more expensive than the PS2 was at the time.  You can't compare the price of a brand-new portable device to a 5 year old console like that.

I'm sure the PSP2 will be more than the 3DS.

On the other hand, it's interesting to me that people seem to consider a $250+ pricetag to be a death sentence for a portable while at the same time there are tons of people paying $500+ for iPads.  The PSP2 sounds more like a tablet-class device to me.

I would certainly recommend playing the first two Ar Tonelico games before AT3.  Especially AT2 which, localization issues aside, is a better game anyway.  While the games are all somewhat independent and are certainly playable on their own, they are also kind of like chapters in a larger story.  You won't fully appreciate AT3 without some background.