The PSP has seen a reversal of fortunes of late. With the PSP Go on the way, a great line-up of new titles, PSP Minis and reduced development costs, the future looks bright for Sony’s handheld console. Well, Zeno Colaco (Sony Computer Entertainment Europe’s “Head of Development Relations”) would like to see the upward trend continue in the future hinting that Sony is considering handing out development kits for the PSP for free.
Currently, it costs €1,200 to buy a development kit for the PSP, which is necessary to create a game for the console. This is now much cheaper than it has been in the past and the cost reduction combined with a new SKU has seen a dramatic rise in the number of new PSP titles being released.
Speaking to Edge, Zeno Colaco mentions that “we (Sony) might investigate a totally free model “. If Sony were to implement such a model, then surely we could see an even further increase in PSP titles. More specifically, this would benefit the PSP Minis (Small, 100mb downloadable games, much like Apple’s Apps Store) business, as smaller development companies could produce games at a lower cost.
In the interview, Zeno is keen to stress that unlike the iTunes App Store, Sony is “looking to support everyone that develops for us, instead of leaving developers out in the wilderness.” So while there will (initially at least) be less titles in the PSP Minis range in comparison, in theory there should be less games that aren’t very good and also less chance of great games becoming lost under a pile of pointless free applications.
It certainly looks like Sony are going head to head with Apple, which is very brave. However, if they decide to go down the route of fully supporting each PSP Minis game and handing out free PSP kits, they stand every chance of the service becoming a success.
Via Edge
