The press release about the merchandising programme was unclear on that point, and it really wasn't helped by the included soundbite from the Sony licensing guy, either, since that muddied the waters.
At the very least, these plushes are more specifically in the PS Vita style, which I never found to be quite as bad as the PSP/PS3 look (right off, you can tell by the way that they don't look like weird bird-people
).
Anyway, I can only assume that they were referring only to specific licensees when they made those claims about the classic designs... You can see the key-art that GB Eye's got on the first page of this thread, for example. It's a faux-retro thing; I like it, I admit, but I would much rather have had that design on a t-shirt...
No word yet on what style is being used by any of the other licensees (we have yet to see the results of the clothing and stationery licenses, for example), or even on other items by the two who've actually got stuff ready to go (both GB Eye and Gaya Entertainment have stuff out, and hold the licenses for several different categories). I'd certainly love to see some stuff done in the true retro look, but I'm going to guess that we'll be seeing a lot more of the artwork that GB Eye put on that poster.