Sony: 10-Year Lifecycle For PSP

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