Sony outlines PSP future at Tokyo Game Show 2007

During today's keynote speech at the Tokyo Game Show, Sony Computer Entertainment president Kazuo Hirai outlined the company's vision of the PlayStation business. As you'd hope, PSP featured prominently alongside its PS2 and PS3 brethren.

Termed "a key driving force for the growth strategy for overall PlayStation business", the PSP figures at the core of Sony's plans, Hirai asserted, before pointing out that global shipment figures of the hardware have now surpassed 26 million (as of June 2007). That's not the same as sale figures, remember, but it offers a rough indication of the format's performance.

There was a hint of potential further revisions to boost the format's portability, as well as cost reduction measures – which is standard practice for any hardware, after all, although it's an interesting point to make so soon after PSP Slim & Lite.

More immediate, however, is the introduction of more colour options, together with new bundles aimed at widening the handheld's appeal to consumers.

Related to this is the promise of enriched network content and services related to the PSP's latest peripherals – camera, GPS, TV tuner (where available) – supported by targeted marketing strategies for individual world regions.

Finally, Sony outlined its intention to further develop the Remote Play PSP/PS3 functionality for PSP owners to enjoy entertainment focused on the sports, RPG and shooting genres. This area could offer some potentially very interesting opportunities, although it's obviously limited to those with a PS3 in their living room.

Nevertheless, Hirai said to expect the integration of functionality such as the previously detailed use of PSP as a controller (not only limited to buttons – the handheld's voice recognition could be incorporated, for instance) or additional screen for PS3 game, but also the ability to have a number of PSPs remote playing a PS3 game (three were shown during Hirai's presentation, although the references to the additional two 'players' were limited to them being able to watch you play, rather than actively play alongside you).

And the option to turn your PS3 on and off from wherever you happen to be in the world via your PSP could prove very interesting.

Taking the Remote Play idea more literally, Hirai confirmed that you should be able to transfer a PS3 game onto PSP to continue playing when away from the home and to then transfer the data back to the PS3 and pick up where you left off on PSP.

Overall, then, nothing that rewrites the 'how to run a company and sell your product' rulebook. And no specific mention of games, you'll note. Normally we'd jump on this like demented guard dogs but Sony has vastly improved its attention with regards to PSP software in the last half of the year and we believe it isn't about to lose sight of that particularly vital part of the business.

As ever, we'll sit back and keep a watchful eye on how things develop for Sony's handheld.