It’s been confirmed on the Japanese PlayStation website. PlayStation Portable firmware 5.00 will be released some time next week and feature PlayStation Store access as we previously reported. The launch date for other regions is not yet known but it is expected to hit the US and Europe around the same time. Firmware 5.00 will be required in order to access the PlayStation Store. Estimated launch for firmware 5.00 is October 15th 2008, when the PlayStation Store for PSP goes live in Japan.
The image above shows the new PlayStation Network icon on the XMB, similar to the PlayStation 3. It is not yet known if the PlayStation Store can be accessed on older PSP models, but our guess is that it will definitely be compatible with the PSP-2000 model.