Sony promises PSP software decline will reverse in 2009

Sony's director of hardware marketing John Koller has been speaking to Edge about PSP, revealing why he thinks there's been a decline in the number of games released onto the console and what Sony has been doing to alleviate the draught over the past nine months.

Koller first acknowledges the present lack of games, saying: "On the software side we've been very open about the fact that there are fewer games this year."

He attributes this shortage to slow hardware sales back in 2006, noting that, "decisions made 20-22 months ago from a development cycle perspective are affecting the quantity of titles available today. 20-22 months ago developers and publishers were looking at the PSP hardware and thinking 'It's not selling as well, maybe it's time to move our resources elsewhere.'"

Koller also says publishers haven't been aware of the shift in the demographic of PSP users, meaning they've released games not properly targeted.

"When we launched the PSP it launched at a 28-year-old, heavily male, New York subway [demographic], and that slowly trended down. Now we're in the mid-teens with a lot of tracking even younger than that. Our research shows that in the next 12 months young moms actually are set to have the highest propensity to purchase the hardware and software for their young children.

"A lot of publishers that were making mature-rated games that were ports from console found they weren't selling very well," Koller concludes.

To get more third-parties back on board, he reveals Sony has been on a six- to nine-month 'road show', visiting all the major publishers and explaining where Sony is heading with the console.

One major selling point is PSP hardware sales, which were down in 2006 but rebounded strongly in the first half of 2007, partly thanks to a price drop in April of that year.

Koller thinks the results of Sony's efforts will be noticed in 2009 and says the company is getting the retail sector ready for it.

"We have a number of very strong franchise games on the docket that will be launching next year. We haven't gone public with those, and many third-parties have not yet either because they're concentrating on holiday, but we have a number of very strong titles coming."

Sony speaks a convincing argument and, with the likes of Resistance: Retribution planned for release next year, is leading by example with support of its console. Let's just hope these first-party titles do well in Europe or PSP could still prove a hard-sell to western publishers who don't have Monster Hunter-sized sales figures as an incentive to bring their games to the handheld.