The PSP Online Store - ‘A Glimpse Towards The Future’ - An Interview with Sony
PSP News had a cool Sony interview:
Two weeks ago, Sony launched the PSP PC store with a whimper. It
debuted just two days before Thanksgiving, offering PSP owners the
chance to download some free themes and buy and download few old and
new PSP games. I didn’t hear about any of it until the weekend when it
got mentioned on the 1UpYours podcast.
Why the quiet launch? Was Sony embarrassed about it?
Late last week I interviewed Eric Lempel, the PlayStation director of network operations in charge of the store.
And we talked about everything.
Seriously. I don’t think we missed a thing. Want to know what the plans
are for this store? The pricing strategy? Why it requires a PC? Whether
it will support Macs? Which titles formerly on UMD will be coming to
the store (he revealed that “SOCOM Fire Team Bravo” and “Twisted Metal:
Head-On” will hit by year’s end)? Whether UMD titles will ever be
released on the download store the same day as they are in game shops?
Which PS3 games he’d like to see on the PSP store? The plans for import
titles?
And more, more, more. Check out the chock-full interview below.
One excerpt to get you thinking:
Multiplayer: In general the store looks like it comes one step closer
to fulfilling a lot of PSP owners’ fantasy of “I want to download
everything. I don’t want that UMD thing.” A lot of people were thinking
the PSP revision might even do away with the UMD and this whole thing
is going to be like an iPod, it’s all going to be downloadable. In your
mind, is this a step closer to that? Is this a way of acknowledging
those people in any way? Is this the PSP showing that download is where
the future is?
Lempel: I would say the industry is at an interesting point right now
where we have the ability to quickly deliver content to people. So the
retail business is still very important to us. And the UMD business is
still doing very well for us and our retail partners. I don’t think
we’re ready to look at that and say, “This is the way it should go
right now.” But we’re at an interesting point in the industry where
consumers know they can get things fast and they’re getting used to it
with other devices from other companies. So it’s something we always
wanted to do. Technically we didn’t have the ability in the past with
some of our hardware. But now that we do we want to start opening up
some of these channels and getting consumers used to that and
experimenting with it.
I would say it’s a glimpse towards the future. Definitely just by
releasing a UMD title in the store it definitely puts ideas in people’s
heads, but no I wouldn’t categorize this as a shift in business model
at this point.
Read the full article here...