PSP is 'gateway drug', says Sony

A few interesting opinions and factoids were shared this week at the sixth annual Wedbush Morgan Securities Management Access Conference (which isn't nearly as dull as it sounds) in New York City, as reported by gi.biz. The most interesting of which regarded the PSP and came from SCEA's senior marketing manager John Koller.

Addressing an audience at a roundtable discussion, Koller said that the PSP has changed the way people think about handheld gaming.

"In the past, it was a small screen experience. It was something that was very difficult to have from a social perspective. Those things have changed."

He also spoke of how the PSP's demographic has shifted since its launch in 2005, when it was originally targeted at 28-40 year olds. Now the console has apparently been adopted by a wide range of gamers to become something considerably different from what Sony initially envisioned.

"That's a very good thing. It's expansionary. For us, the PSP is a very high growth, high margin business and something that is a very good product for us," said the marketing manager.

Sony apparently now looks at the PSP as a kind of "gateway drug" according to Koller. In other words, it's a console which gets people into gaming. They purchase the PSP as their first console and then move on to the PS3.

"For us, it has been a really interesting experience. The PSP really parlays well into our broader hardware business."