One of the biggest disappointments of E3 last week was that Sony failed to announce a PSP2. John Koller of SCEA has been speaking to Joystiq and appears to be suggesting the PSP2 is still some way off.
“There is absolutely a 10-year life cycle for PSP, and probably more,” he said. “We’ve talked about ‘We’ll be in the PSP business as long as we’re in the PlayStation business’, because we absolutely believe in handheld.”
“I think it’s a long term opportunity and we will stay in it. Now in terms of where we are in the current life cycle, I think we’re just kind of hitting our stride. We just announced that we hit 60 million units worldwide, which is a very good number for PSP, we’ve got a lot of good development support.”
Sony seem very focused on their 10-year life cycles though that doesn’t mean there will be a 10 year gap between consoles. The PS2 has been on the market 10 years now but the PS3 is already 3 and a half years old. The PSP turns 6 in Japan this Christmas. If Sony keep to their word it we would likely see a PSP2 release around Christmas 2011 in Japan, probably 2012 elsewhere.
“We always say a platform will turn off when the development spicket turns off. We’ve got 70 games coming this year, we’ve got 70-80 coming next year – it’s just a very healthy platform.
“I don’t think we’d be spending investment to the tune that we are without full belief that this is a go-forward platform.”
Clearly Sony are putting some money behind the PSP but I think many would question whether the platform was “very healthy”. There has been a distinct lack of third party games over the past couple of years and Sony simply haven’t been able to provide enough games to make up the short fall. This year’s releases of Peace Walker, God of War, Kingdom Hearts and 3rd Birthday won’t be enough to prevent calls for the release of a PSP2.
Source: Joystiq
freezebug2
I tried a mates PSP Go the other day and although the design is beautiful? and has some great technology built into it, I found that actual gameplay for me was too cumbersome and I could not get my hands around it properly as my ten sausages were just too big for it. I went on to have a go on my Phatty PSP 1000 with no problem at all, so the PSP2 design needs to along the lines of the original but incorporate the PSP Go goodies.
Charmed_Fanatic
60 Mill … wow good going!!
iBirch
They really need PSP2! PSP is dying fast in my eyes, I really hope it is announced sometime this year.
freezebug2
My vision for the PSP2 would be a design similar in size to the PSP 3000 with a sliding screen like the PSP Go and include Bluetooth, Touchscreen, TV out, UMD Drive, Two thumb stick paddle controls, Application downloads, a slot for a Sim card etc. Just a few things I can think of but the main one has to be…competitive pricing!!