Smedley: MMOs Headed for the PSP
By Shawn on Wednesday, October 1st, 2008 at 12:31 PM PST In Game Companies, Game Platforms, Games, Portable, Sony, Sony
John Smedley, president of Sony Online Entertainment, commented on the future of the PSP after his keynote at the New York Games Conference. He was there speaking on the future of MMOs, which he believes will be a good match for Sony’s portable platform. MTV Multiplayer shared his plans for the PSP.
“I think PSP is something that we’re definitely looking at; 34 million [sold] worldwide really opens your eyes, and they’re all connected.”
“We started to get very interested in [the PSP] when we switched over from Sony Pictures to Sony Computer Entertainment back in April,” he explained. “And as we’ve kind of got our heads up looking around the world within Sony Computer Entertainment, we’re really starting to see a big push for PSP. We think it’s a world-class device… In the future, we see full MMOs that are designed for the PSP.”
Smedley believes that before the PSP gets its own dedicated MMO, he would like to see it integrated into some of Sony’s existing MMOs. He has a couple ideas of how to go about it.
“Maybe one way to do it: In ‘Free Realms,’ you could have a pet-training system that literally connects to our online gaming where you can mess around with your pet.”
“Another way to do it might be to give them mini-games that they can do [on the PSP] when sitting at a bus stop,” he offered. “You’re sitting there leveling up your character, you log in at home when you’re on wi-fi, and all of sudden your character has leveled up. We think those kinds of experiences are very possible.”
Considering the versatility of the PSP and how well it can work with the PS3, I can envision MMOs on it. However something with very simple graphics like Gaia’s zOMG! or Maple Story which is actually in development for the DS, would work much better than Star Wars Galaxies or EverQuest. Besides, I’m sure Sony wouldn’t want to be responsible for people going blind playing MMOs for hours on end on such a small screen.
Giving someone the ability to log off and still play the game offline, then login and have there data updated is just asking for trouble. I could see this evolving into so many cheats/exploits. While I think the idea is great, stopping these other things wont happen I think.
~Death Dream~
“Another way to do it might be to give them mini-games that they can do [on the PSP] when sitting at a bus stop,” he offered. “You’re sitting there leveling up your character, you log in at home when you’re on wi-fi, and all of sudden your character has leveled up. We think those kinds of experiences are very possible.”
Wow. Sounds like something that Dreamcast started a decade ago that had me so excited. Poor Sega. They were on to something with that system, I hope they jump on this to implement some old plans. A portable battle arena for Phantasy Star, maybe?