Sony VP says PlayStation Network will be key PSP driver

[wraggster]

Interesting article from pocketgamer

There's plenty of speculation concerning PSP at the moment, so to get up to speed ahead of any announcements at the July E3 Media & Business Summit 2007, Pocket Gamer caught up with Zeno Colaço, vice president of publisher and developer relations at SCEE, during the company's recent DevStation developers conference.

Pocket Gamer: Everyone seems to have different opinions about PSP, so what's you view of the platform, especially compared to DS?

Zeno Colaço: Our performance on PSP has been good but people have tended to compare it to PSone and PlayStation 2, where the hardware was always out of stock. It's a different challenge. We were new to the handheld space. I think Nintendo can take a lot of credit for launching a different type of product for a slightly different consumer and it's done exceptionally well. I think some of the DS games have been fantastic. Where in hindsight we've been short is one or two killer apps that would have been able to drive PSP forward.

What do you think have been the reasons for this?

One of our biggest challenges was PlayStation 2 games could easily be ported to PSP because of the raw processing power of the PSP. We went to all our publishers and developers and said, 'You're not going to set the world alight if you effectively take your PlayStation 2 projects onto PSP'. In reality, that's happened on a lot of early games. Where we have seen successes were games developed specifically for PSP – the GTA games are a classic example.

So looking forward, the PSP business model remains very strong, especially for third-party developers and publishers because the 20:80 Sony model is that 80 per cent of business will come from the games of the thirdparty developers and publishers.

How do you expect to develop the PSP in future?

We now have a credible install base – seven million in Europe, 20 million worldwide – and it's time now to link PSP in with what it can do in conjunction with PlayStation 3 and the network space.

I think the downloadable element of PSP will be a key factor as we move into 2008; connectibility with PlayStation 3 is a key factor. We've soft pedalled this to date, because we had to concentrate on PlayStation 3, but the PlayStation Network isn't just about PS3 going forward.

What about any proposed changes to the hardware?

[Laughs] The technology behind PSP is still top-end and so that doesn't need to be addressed. It's all about showing the power off to its best.

[Shadowblind]

[Laughs] The technology behind PSP is still top-end and so that doesn't need to be addressed. It's all about showing the power off to its best.[/INDENT]

This is true! Now all they need are a few Zelda games and a Paper mario game. Maybe a Halo Portable game or something.

[Tesseract]

None of which are going to happen, sadly. Nintendo and Microsoft would not release their cash cows that lightly.

I, for one, greet the PSN on PSP with open arms. Hopefully, we'll start to see more imaginitive titles with the PSN as a foundation.

One problem I can forsee, though, is the PSN being a thorn in the side to those running custom firmware, similar to the x360 situation with xBox Live....

[Solidsnake3000]

man what they need is dot hack on psp with infrastructure

[ZeakStarwind]

man what they need is dot hack on psp with infrastructure

I have to agree with you on that my friend. .hack// games would so rule on the PSP. Just think, the ability to do Ad-hoc and Infrastructure for the on-line base style to form 4 team members on quests to the darkest ends of the viral infected universe >=D

[Buddy4point0]

mabey with downloadable things we could get a mmorpg like runescape or world of warcraft.

[mcdougall57]

Interesting article from pocketgamer

The technology behind PSP is still top-end and so that doesn't need to be addressed. It's all about showing the power off to its best.

i also have to agree but who thought of umd needs to be shot (its loud,its fragile and its slow)

[Basil Zero]

They just need to release

God of War, Gran Turismo , Wipeout and Legend of Dragoon.