Ready at Dawn officially finished with PSP development

[Shrygue]

via Games Industry


Ready at Dawn, the US developer behind two of the biggest releases on Sony's handheld, has confirmed it will no longer be making games for the PSP.

The studio was responsible for God of War: Chains of Olympus, a title that was honoured with the release of a limited edition PSP in the US. The game is also the highest-rated PSP title according to Metacritic, with an average score of 91 per cent.

Daxter, the studio's first PSP title released in 2006, had sold over two million copies by February this year, helped by being bundled with the ceramic white PSP in Europe and the silver SKU in the US, and later re-released as part of the Greatest Hits range.

"With Chains of Olympus going gold in Japan, we're now officially done with PSP development," said the company.

"Today we sent all out devkits back and seeing all these boxes ready to be picked up definitely marks the end of an era here at Ready at Dawn," the company said in a recent blog post.

Ready at Dawn first mentioned it wouldn't be making any more PSP titles in March.

As a start-up studio, it was a developer keen to sing the praises of Sony's handheld, with president Didier Malenfant criticising other developers for making excuses for inferior games.

"Everything is compromised, and it bugs the hell out of me when you hear a lot of developers saying, 'Well, we can't do this that way because it's a handheld game,' or 'We can't do this because it doesn't have a second analog stick,'" he told GamesIndustry.biz in March, 2006.

But the future of Sony's handheld console looks shaky. In a recent interview, Rob Cooper of Ubisoft said that Sony currently lacks direction with its PSP strategy, although he was also keen to point out that the handheld is still a viable format, with the publisher stating it has 10 PSP titles scheduled for release this fiscal year.

Sony Europe's president David Reeves also recently admitted that the format lacks new titles in Europe and the US, where the company is introducing new applications such as the Go! Explore sat-nav application.

However, sales in Japan continue to outperform its rivals in the region. Last week alone the console sold 71,896 units, helped by new PSP releases from Konami and Marvelous Entertainment.

[darthhaze420]

it breaks my heart to see my fav system fade out i feel like history is repeating itself like when game gear lost to the green screen on the original gameboy it is sad ppl dont support better hardware systems it is not like the games are not there the ds pails in comparison

[Veskgar]

This is very sad news indeed. But the article doesn't point to a single specific reason why they are ending development. Is it lack of SOFTWARE sales? I know they have helped push hardware with the Daxter & now God of War bundle packs with the Slim.

If it was lack of sales for Daxter & God of War that is the reason, I wish they'd point that out.

I don't want to be so pessimistic as to think this is going to be the beginning of the end for the PSP. The PSP in terms of hardware sales is more successful than ever. I have to think the portable gaming market is not quite as large as the console gaming market. But then again, seeing sales figures for the DS Lite and PSP Slim says the opposite.

The hardware is selling, if more developers took the time and care that Ready at Dawn has done on their games, the PSP would be unstoppable.

[Buddy4point0]

It's a lot because of piracy. It keeps developing for the psp a low-profit thing to do, and therefore, undesirable.

[Elven6]

My PSP had broke a while ago, I was going to buy a new one but with developers jumping ship and the fate of UMD is ultimatly decided, I might not.

[andwhyisit]

This is very sad news indeed. But the article doesn't point to a single specific reason why they are ending development. Is it lack of SOFTWARE sales? I know they have helped push hardware with the Daxter & now God of War bundle packs with the Slim.

If it was lack of sales for Daxter & God of War that is the reason, I wish they'd point that out.

They said they were going to do this long before they finished development on GoW:CoO. They also were asked if piracy was the reason for them leaving and the answer was no. They just wanted to try their luck with the big consoles.