Broader Third-Party Support For PSP in ‘09

SCEA director of hardware marketing John Koller, in a follow-up to a report on Edge-Online about the decline of third-part support for the PSP, said that the company expects broader support in 2009. The first report revealed that third-party support for Sony hand-held had been steadily declining since 2006.

Koller acknowledges the facts on the ground: there were not very many third-party PSP software titles in 2008 and chalked it up to declining sales of the system in 2006 - based on executive decision made on that data 22 months ago.

The good news for PSP owners is that 2009 will see an upswing in PSP software titles because the hardware is selling like crazy around the world - even outpacing the Xbox 360 and PS3. He also pointed to the fact that the trend of making ports of console games was a failed strategy that many publishers learned from. The result is that we will see more original PSP titles next year - or at least that is the hope at SCEA.

“The recipe for success on the PSP resides simply in providing franchise games that are strong brand names like on consoles, but have unique gameplay on the system,” Koller told EDGE-Online. “You cannot have ports. We used God of War: Chains of Olympus this year as an example of that, as well as Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core, and Midnight Club, which is going to be launching in the next few weeks. Those three games are titles that have very strong brand names on console but are coming over with unique gameplay on the PSP.”

But Sony hasn’t exactly stood behind the PSP; there have been very few original titles released for the system compared to years passed. Hopefully 2009 will see more original games from publishers around the world. Certainly more games like Disgaea, Final Fantasy Tactics and Jeanne D’Arc would be welcomed in my house.

Source: EDGE-Online