Sony Promises Fewer Ports, More First- and Third-Party Games for PSP

When I mentioned how I’ve found myself unable to take Hot Shots Golf: Open Tee 2 out of my PSP, I didn’t think of the upside — there isn’t a whole lot else to play on the system. Quality, original games for the system are few and far between, and for every Lumines or God of War, there are 20 crappy ports. Sony’s John Koller acknowledges that, but refutes the idea that the PSP is dying, and in fact believes that “we’re at a point actually where the counter to that is that it’s actually doing very, very well.”

“From a gaming standpoint, I think that there’s a few things that are happening. There’s been a calibration amongst publishers of how to publish for the PSP,” Koller said. He admits that “initially a lot of the games that launched were either ports or games that didn’t really meet the demographic’s interest, and that was as we were shifting down to that teen demo,” and thinks that’s due to publishers being unsure of what demographic was actually buying the PSP.

“We have been — and I guess where we are now is at a point were today publishers are seeing the results of decisions made 18 months ago. Where they were saying, ‘You know what, maybe we’ll try this or that or maybe we’ll wait a little bit to see how the PSP does.’ The level of games that we have now are very strong on the quality side, and I think, in many ways, have kind of followed what we have been preaching here is that the key to success in publishing on the PSP is to launch larger franchise games with unique gameplay underneath. That’s a non-port type strategy. That’s something like a God of War or Crisis Core where it’s a large brand name, it’s a very good game from a quality standpoint, but it’s unique. You can’t play it on console, and it avoids the cannibalization that you would get from someone who may own a console and play their PSP at home, which is a common occurrence.”

He continued, “Given that situation, many consumers were choosing one or the other, and that’s not a situation that we want to put a consumer in. That’s another point to be made, and then the third thing is a lot of interest in the PSN, the PlayStation Network, and the downloadable distribution there. There’s some considerable resources there being placed against development in that area as well.”

But things are looking up, according to Koller — both in terms of quality and the prices that you’ll be able to find games at.

“I think the net of this is that over the course of the next six to twelve months, there’s going to be a tremendous amount of excitement about the franchises that are coming to PSP, the quality of the games, and then also the games that are going to be easily downloaded that are very engaging but for a less expensive price. I think that those areas are really going to instigate a lot of excitement around that category.”

I certainly hope so. I’m gonna need something else to play once I become tired of Hot Shots.

via PSP Fanboy

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