If like us, you never thought it would finally get here, you’ll be pleased to see that the weekend has finally arrived!

The Autumn months are here with the nights getting longer and the temperature getting steadily lower but never fear, we’re gamers, we don’t need outdoor activities! We’ve got games!

This weekend gamers around the world have Gran Turismo on the PSP (and of course the PSP Go to play it on), Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 and Risen on the PC.

Gamers in North America can finally enjoy Dead Space Extraction and Motorstorm Arctic Edge. While our neighbours across the ocean in Europe can enjoy the delights of Fifa 10 and Disney Pixar’s Up.

You know what’s coming, here’s what we at ThePortableGamer and sister site GamesAreEvil intend to be doing this weekend!

Davey: This weekend I fully intend to annoy the hell out of the wife by playing Fifa 10 at every opportunity. As a self-confessed Fifa fanatic it’s something that’ll no doubt take over my life for the next few weeks until Forza 3 comes out. In the downtimes when the wife manages to rip the controller out of my hands, I’ll be playing both Cate West and Mini Ninjas on the Nintendo DS for review purposes.

Karl: FIFA 10 and I may even try and polish a few achievements off on some of my other games on xbox360.

Melody: I will be playing some games for review on the iPhone, as well as Scribblenauts and the new Left4Dead downloadable content. w00t!

Sam: I’m going to be saving the world one fusion at a time with Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2. Warning: may contain traces of boredom.

Scott: This weekend will be spent with my friends Katamari Damacy Forever, probably some more Madworld, and trying to get through a couple games i have up for review (The Warriors: Street Brawl as well as 5spots Party for Wiiware). I may even visit my enemy… Leisure Suit Larry again… sigh.

Carter: Well, I’m going to be playing a bunch of new games on my brand spanking new, totally revolutionary, PSP Go, which will totally revitalize and bring new gamers to the platform! Oh wait, I was off in bizarro land again. I figure this weekend’s a good time to finally hammer down and crush the skull of Shadow Complex, which has kind of been sitting dormant for a while for me. And I just got Dissidia for my PSP, so I plan on giving that game a good spanking.

Gabriel: This weekend I plan on having a walk down memory lane by replaying Crash Bandicoot 2 for about the 50th time. I’ll be stomping 25 lives out of a cute polar bear, of course! Besides that, perhaps a bit of Twisted Metal : Head On is in order.

Dana: I’m also digging into my backlog of games. I’ll be working on Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay and then Assault on Dark Athena.

Blake: I’m going to spend a good portion of my weekend hammering through some on-rails Wii action with Dead Space: Extraction for review. In other games, I will totally be buying both Gran Turismo PSP and Motorstorm Arctic Edge via digital download so I can get my fill of high octane racing. Times like now make me finally glad to be a PSP owner!…Oh damn, I almost forgot about SoulCalibur for PSP… I may end up kicking MotorStorm to the curb in favor of that!

Jon: I’ll be doing up some Guitar Hero: Metallica on Wii (just for me) and spending some more time with Dirt 2 on DS for review. All the house parties I’ve been to in the last few weeks been Beatles Rock Band parties so if I’m out there will probably be a little of that too.

Dave: I will be playing more City Of Heroes when not doing chores. Oh and just a weird shout out to myself, I finally got a character to level 50 (without using short cuts) on my 36th Birthday. Console wise I may go back into the Shadow Complex.

Have a great weekend all and check back Monday for more GamesAreEvil goodness!

When considering the PSP Go and its sixteen gigs of internal memory, and also considering that the UMD technology that Sony is leaving behind with their new product, how much space will really exist for games?

Sony is looking to open an apps store similar to the iTunes App Store, allowing smaller developers to make games and in some ways creating a more “developer friendly” product. It was stated that most titles average 600-800 MB, which reminds me of the older days of PC. But even with the sixteen gigs of expandable memory effectively allowing the PSP Go capable of 32 gigs, one question lingers.

How will Sony allow gamers to pull their games off the system to allow space for newer games?

More importantly, what about the save files? Granted, it is mildly simple to backup saves and content from the PSP to a PC, but will Sony’s App store function better than the Media Go software that regularly crashes and fails? And what about expanded codec support?

One extra problem is that the Memory Stick Pro Duo and the newer M2 stick are still somewhat expensive compared to other types of flash memory. Obviously Sony wants to keep the technology inside its own borders to increase the amount of potential profit, but the company needs to think about the simplicity of iTunes and make sure their “sister” product can function in a comparable way.

There has not been a bundle announced yet with the PSP Go, but Gran Turismo would be an obvious choice. At E3 this year, it was announced that Gran Turismo would be released the same day as the PSP Go launch. Hm, I am not a marketing genius; but isn’t that an obvious choice?

The $249 price point should include a downloadable game (new launch title or previous Greatest Hits, I honestly don’t care), proper PSP Go to PSP software, and something extra, not sure what that should be but give me a couple weeks and I’ll think of something. Even God of War: Chains of Olympus would be a good deal.

Sony still has not announced how they are going to allow gamers to translate their physical UMDs to digital copies. Personally, I have more games than the space will probably allow, and while I will not load all my games onto the PSP Go, if I purchase one, it brings back the main point: how will the games be stored or backed up?

I’ll give Sony the benefit that they will not screw their audience over with this new product, but with so many unanswered questions and nothing concrete emerging from Sony, I am a little worried. The timer is clocking down to release day, if there’s one thing I learned, the year isn’t nearly long enough when you announce something in June and will be releasing in October.

Keeping a secret in the gaming industry is a lost art – you want to keep something juicy under wraps, you better have bombs implanted in your employees’s skulls – the ultimate NDA.  Sony does not have a “boom goes the dynamite” policy apparently, as word has leaked out just before their E3 press conference that the PSP Go is real and it’s fantastic. The rumors about the system have been mostly true – the PSP Go packs a sliding screen that hides the buttons and no UMD drive. There is no second analog stick, but the system packs 16GB of internal memory along with a Memory Stick Micro slot. Wait, 16GB? That’s just sexy. Also, there’s now Bluetooth (we assume Bluetooth A2DP support to support stereo headphones) as well. It’ll be interesting to see how Sony handles releases for the PSP from now on – will all titles be digitally distributed, or will PSP Go owners miss out on some of them (I imagine not, losing a part of your audience due to being UMD-only is a great way to spur on digital distribution)? This could be a big move for Sony, giving the PSP (a system that’s pretty much still king of the handheld jungle in terms of power despite its relative age) a kick in the pants in the fight against the DS and iPhone juggernauts.

That wasn’t the end of the fun for the PSP Go, either, as there’s a new Metal Gear game coming for the PSP Go as well. Let me take the time to say, “Woo! Metal Gear!” and also to warn Kojima that hour-long cutscenes don’t really play on handhelds. Find an editor, and keep at it a reasonable length, son. And somehow, that mythical Gran Turismo for PSP that I’m pretty sure was announced back in the Old Testament? Still in development, and coming out for PSP Go. Exciting times for the PSP indeed. Peep the leaked Qore episode below (and laugh as Sony’s security measures have failed miserably) and just imagine – somewhere, a Sony exec is kicking themselves wondering what they did to deserve this leak. They better have a big surprise planned for E3, and we’re not talking about a PS3 Slim either.