Third Parties Abandoning PSP

[wraggster]

It’s a good idea to start off with the most general information. As it stands, it’s also the most alarming information:

2005 and 2006 look like a normal, strong trajectory for a new hardware platform. While releases on the system started off fairly slow as developers came to grips with the hardware, the growing installed base also grew the amount of software. As a result, 2006 saw over double the number of games as 2005.

By 2007, it would be reasonable to expect healthy growth in the number of releases yet again. Yet somehow, this is not the case; 2007 actually drops off in releases by a significant 17 percent.

Alone that would be pretty bad, but then 2008 creeps in. It’s important to recall several things about 2008; as noted on the previous page, the counting method differed here, which could lead to slight inconsistencies in the data. And of course, we've taken into account games that haven’t shipped yet and might be pushed back, but have no way of knowing about games that haven’t been announced yet that could see stealth releases—PlayStation Store games, for example.

Even taking this into account, the drop-off is so statistically significant that there’s no way to write it off. 2008 managed only slightly more releases than the PSP’s launch year, which was only ten months long. That’s a staggering 40 percent decrease compared to an already depressed 2007.

One can get a bit more detail by looking at the month-to-month release schedule, which fluctuates according to the expected industry cycles but definitely trends downward.

To avoid the natural seasonal depressions, it might be more instructive to pull out a single month from each year. March is a good example, because it’s been a busy one throughout the system’s life and allows comparison with solid 2008 data, instead of guessing with something like October. It looks almost identical to the yearly release data in the first graph, thus reinforcing the fact that things are looking bad for the PSP software support.

http://www.edge-online.com/features/...psp?page=0%2C1

[mike_jmg]

IMO
I think we are getting out of the bump, there is a lot of great games coming, and I keep seeing announcements of new ones, although not for this year, maybe 2009 will be the year of the PSP.

Also PSP-3000 looks like something we can hold on to, to keep the psp alive, maybe not with homebrew as it is expected to be unhackeable, but with a bit more of third party support once it gets released.

[paul3100]

atarl lynx I & II come to mind

paul

[repuken2]

I don't see how psp3000 can help psp, we don't need more hardware but more software. It's really dissapointing when you see so few releases, future isn't looking any good.

Too bad, still i love my psp, i have 2, one of 'em a black piano slim was bought 1 month ago, already in knowledge of this bad situation but with all the stuff already released y have gaming for years, most likely thanks to homebrew.

Who knows? i have already begin to think of the psp like the Dreamcast of the portables, a great powerfull machine that wasn't fully understood for it's time.

[Justise]

PSP was full of crappy releases from the very beginning. With very few exceptions, most of the PSP games suffered from camera problems, and the rest of them were Ports, usually much worse than their original versions.

Iso support in CF is a little responsible for allowing the gamer to test a PSP game (and see how crappy it is) before they buy it.
The rest of responsibility goes to Sony, who made a portable console with crappy controls and big loading times, and they hardly even try to support it.

[rageteam1000]

Honestly, if sony would quit trying to do many things at the same time such as manage three gaming systems and distrubuting first party and third party games and movies at the same time, then I think some other things like the PSP would fare better.

[rageteam1000]

And software piracy and/or word of mouth can keep a bad game from selling off the retail shelves just the same as a good game would. And the same piracy/word of mouth can boost sales and even inspire sequels for even more sales later on.

[carlitx]

the psp is going dead. Sony did $#@!ty marketing ( I mean those "get your own" commercials pissed me off and I wanted to jump on mine), half ass hardware (the UMD's fall apart in your hands making them untradable and most times unusable. along with the fact that despite me using a metal case for my psp it still seems to turn into a pile of useless junk by falling apart.), it's nice media wise. being able to see your pictures, play your music, browse the web and play games is very cool for a pocket platform that is not a cell phone, but Sony screwed themselves by trying not to be home brew friendly and the vast majority of people do not know that there is a modding community, or they have no idea on how to use Google to find out that they don't need a mod chip. And yes it has about a handful of good games, such as a few final fantasy ports and originals, a couple more RPG's, the racing games are fun to pick up and play for a bit, and then Tekken Dark Res was a really good fighter. Unfortunately Sony keeps allot of there games off American and European shelves to keep in japan, and only releases a few in PAL or NTSC. Another thing about the games is that when they are announced they spend no time until they hit japan's shelves and than over a year just to come to other countries.

PS: I also think if they were to release the bleach heat of the soul games, the gundam games and add some fo the features that only the Japanese public are privy to they could save the console. Along with keeping developers on their toes to get the games out faster and make the games better. Cause as we just saw, developers just are not interested anymore b/c they know they won't make a dime off making a PSP game.

[jamotto]

ugh, this again, haven't we beat this dead horse enough already. If third parties where abandoning the PSP there would be no games being developed period. Anyways the DS saw nearly identical decreases in 3rd party support this year too, but I guess that doesn't matter.

[ray13j]

Go ds