You can make an Android XMB theme, but Android means a whole new market of APPs!

Appzzz"?

I think this UI looks hella tacky. Seriously, it just reminds me of some cheap PMPs my dad picked up in China, once.

I doubt it, for a few reasons:

1. If Sony is going to merge their whole PSP platform into Android somehow, the Xperia Play would have a lot more PSP games coming to it than just sold old PS1 titles. At the very least, PSP minis. And why not put the Playstation brand on it if it's running the same platform as the NGP?

2. If I were Sony, I would not try to make it easy to port software between PSP/NGP and Android. It would dilute the value of Sony's platform if sufficiently powerful smartphones could run the same games, and it would discourage developers from taking advantage of PSP/NGP-specific features when they can design their games for NGP plus 100 million other devices.

3. Smartphone OSes in general aren't as well-suited to the 3D performance that gaming demands as a dedicated gaming device, and that goes double for the dalvik VM that Android uses. John Carmack made a statement about the low-level APIs of a gaming device putting similar hardware 'a generation' ahead of smartphones in terms of gaming performance. I don't think Sony went through the trouble of overengineering the NGP with every feature plus a kitchen sink just so they could weigh it all down with a sluggish OS.

I think it both makes sense and doesn't at the same time ...

I think most of the benefits are pretty well understood (apps, leveraging an existing and stable os, etc.), so I won't go into details on those.

Where I see it as being risky is that Android is already a fairly well understood OS, and hackers are already aware of bugs/exploits that will give them an advantage on trying to "crack" the NGP. Now, this isn't necessarily a problem, and security through obscurity isn't a good approach in general, but it could become a problem.

Well #1, the NGP is not a phone, it would be for us hardcore gamers who want the best, Not sure of your point here, they are two different systems, as Sony has stated. With #2 and #3  I think you don't really understand, Android would be the game launcher, the games wouldn't be burdened at all by Android. All the games mentioned, killzone, uncharted, etc. would be designed for the NGP and wouldn't run on any other Android device, and yet any Android app could run on the NGP.It's a win/ win deal for both consumers and developers. I'm smart enough to not be confused by the difference of a game like Angry Birds and NGP Uncharted. It would keep the hackers from, well, hacking, since it would be open to anything they wanted to make it do with Android.

That's not android.

That's the only thing I don't like about NGP. Gimme the XMB NAO!

Sony said it is not the droid you are looking for!

http://www.thesixthaxis.com/2011/01/31/ngppsp2-os-not-android/

Personally, I think XMB would be perfectly suited for a touch screen.  Slide your finger right or left to get to the correct spot, and then up and down to see what friends are online, select game you want to play, etc. etc.  I don't quite understand why they think they have to change that.