TOKYO (AP) -- Sony's handheld video game machine, the PlayStation Portable, will connect to Skype, the popular, free voice-over-Internet service, later this month in Japan after a two-month delay, the company said Tuesday.

Skype has been available for the PSP in the U.S. and Europe since January, allowing people to use the Net-linking portable game machine as a phone.

But it wasn't available in Japan yet because the microphone Sony Computer Entertainment Japan had planned didn't meet specifications from Skype, a division of eBay Inc., a U.S. online auction company.

Special microphones for PSP's Skype feature will go on sale in Japan on March 19 at 2,500 yen (US$24) each and 4,000 yen (US$39) for two, and software will be upgraded a day earlier.

Headsets already on sale in overseas are being used for Skype since January, according to the video game unit of the Japanese electronics and entertainment company.

Skype says 276 million people have registered to use Skype around the world.

Tokyo-based Sony Corp. has been looking to boost offerings beyond games for the PSP, which faces stiff competition from Japanese rival Nintendo Co.'s DS handheld video game machine.

Sony recently raised its global sales forecast for the PSP for the fiscal year ending March 31, to 13 million machines from an earlier 10 million.

Nintendo, based in Kyoto, Japan, is expecting to sell 29.5 million DS machines during the same period.

Sony's PlayStation 3 home console is also struggling against the hit Nintendo Wii.

But PlayStation 3 sales are expected to pick up since the victory of the Blu-ray disc format in next-generation video that came when Toshiba said it would stop making the competing HD DVD products. The PlayStation 3 also works as a Blu-ray player.

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