Koller promises more first and third party games, less ports

Filed under: Interviews

It's undeniable that the PSP is in the middle of a serious software drought. Even John Koller, PSP's main marketing man in America, acknowledges that. Why the sudden drop of games, after the successful launches of games like God of War: Chains of Olympus and Crisis Core? It's simple -- PSP wasn't performing too well earlier in its life cycle, and developers have only recently woken up to the incredible potential of the PSP as a platform. "I think what you're seeing is the result of decisions made 18 months ago, a development cycle ago when hardware sales weren't as strong as they are now and we were shifting demographics from that older, professional consumer to the teen group. There was kind of a little bit of a lull in hardware sales 18 to 20 months ago; you're seeing the results today from those decisions back then."

Since then, Koller and the Sony team has been going on a publisher "road show," and according to Koller, their efforts to envigorate the PSP development community has been successful. "Our worldwide studio team is actively developing titles for that platform and we've been on a road show amongst every, major third-party publisher -- which we actually just finished last week -- and have been talking to them about really how to publish on the PSP, and the level of excitement is really palpable."

When can we expect new game announcements? Well, that's up to each publisher. However, Koller promises that "we're going to see a very good lineup of quality franchise titles coming over to the PSP that are really unique." In fact, "you're not going to see many ports anymore, and I think that's good." We'd agree.

Read the complete interview at IGN.