Hacking the PSP Blog

Sony’s Senior Marketing Manager John Koller Interviewed

From GameInformer:

Game Informer: Looking back on the last two years, what are your overall thoughts on the PSP?

John Koller: I’m going to set it up by year, because it’ll segue way nicely into what we’re looking at for this upcoming year. We’re very pleased with the PSP business here and it’s really fitting in perfectly with what we have set out with from the beginning. As we’ve talked about many times, the PSP doesn’t directly compete against any product really that’s out in the market right now, just due to its full feature set. So the onus came onto us at SCEA to market that appropriately, and also to place the correct content behind each of those buckets. So that’s really been over the past year our goal, to really focus on the content for not only for last year but also for this upcoming year and in years to come, to make sure there’s enough content efficiently and really perfectly placed behind each of those feature sets.

We have as the end of March there’s going to be 250 plus games available, so the game side of the PSP has been really well-received by developers and publishers. We talk to third parties quite a bit; they’re still very bullish on the PSP. Obviously, on the first party we’ve got a number of great titles coming out this year, as does the third party—including some exclusive titles from the third party for PSP—so the game side I think is very buttoned up. Over the last year, we added TivoToGo, the year prior we had Location Free TV for kind of a TV bucket.

The UMD business has been fairly steady. As many people know, some retailers decided to get out of the business, several have gotten back in the business—actually last holiday. They saw the growth potential, and in fact we have seen some growth there in that category, so there have been a number of more efficiently targeted releases, less of the outside of the target demo type movie content and more of the action and comedy that really resonates well. Music has shot up. Music in our latest research is actually the #2 use for the PSP behind single-player games and it kind of came as a surprise. We knew music was going to be important, but how quickly it shot up the ranks and people using the music functionality when they travel or even at home has been a nice surprise. And then obviously the Internet and some of the other areas that are growth areas for us I think we’re going to look at this year to try and promote. We also are going to try and expand our target audience this year. Since launch, we’ve been focused pretty heavily on the older more travel oriented consumers someone who we’ve called “urban nomads” but they are the ones taking subways to work, commuting, or taxis, planes, whatnot. And we’re going to start trending a little bit younger. We’re seeing a lot of sales coming from the teen group–13-17–in fact that’s our #1 owner group now for the PSP. We’re really going to focus a lot of our marketing efforts on that area this upcoming year.

GI: Do think Sony as a company has accomplished its goals with the PSP so far?

Koller: Yes. There’s a lot of other goals we have for it. We talk about it here as the cultural product that kind of resides between our living room console products–PS2-PS3. The goal from the beginning with the PSP was to always be able to take your entertainment with you. Whether it’s games or other content, we’ve really worked hard on the Remote Play functionality between the PS3 and PSP to allow you to take that other entertainment with you that you may have stored on your PS3. From the overall perspective, we’re very, very pleased. We’ve achieved our goals for where we want to be right now with the PSP. We also realize that there’s a lot of room to grow and there’s a lot of things we’re going to be adding this year.

This year is going to be the best PSP year thus far. There’s just a ton of great things coming. I can’t talk about all of them today, but it’s going to be a fantastic year for the PSP.

GI: What do you think the PSP’s greatest success story has been in the last two years?

Koller: I think really carving out a new market space. When we first launched the PSP, there were a lot of very strong both mobile and portable gaming devices on the market. Some competitors and some indirect competitors had very long lineages as far as their successes. We were really able to break in and grab a new kind of consumer. Someone that didn’t want to necessarily play really the 7-or-8-year-old skewing games, also didn’t want to play games on their cell phones, but who wanted to be able to take their entertainment content with them. Also centering on the fact there were console quality games on the PSP that they could play. I think we have achieved that goal. We’re above the 7 million install base now according to the February TRST numbers, and we’re right on track with where we want to be. And it can only get better as we add both functionality as well as connectivity with our other platforms, because that’s the ultimate goal is to have all of these work very synergistically, and we started that with Remote Play.

March 24, 2007

Read the full interview here...

Source: GameInformer

Sony admits focus on PS3, finally going back to PSP

From PSP Fanboy:

At GDC, we complained that Sony didn't care about PSP. Phil Harrison's speech was all about Sony's latest console effort, the PS3--Sony's handheld wasn't in the picture at all. Compared to Nintendo's continuous support of DS with original first-party titles, Sony appears to be neglecting PSP. Fortunately, someone at Sony's finally admitting that this is a problem. Sony UK boss Ray Maguire spoke to GI.biz about PSP, and how it will try to compete against Nintendo's incredibly popular handhelds.

"From a PSP situation we have a wider split of third-party versus first-party than our competitors do, who are very much first-party developers. We've been putting quite a lot of energy behind PS3, now we'll be able to split some of those resources and go back to the PSP to make sure we've got some compelling games coming. As a criticism, yes, perhaps part of that is true. But we have a solution in place."

Obviously, God of War is part of that so-called solution. The localization of Jeanne d'Arc is another good step. However, Sony must do more to satiate our appetite for original games. When will we see some of these new "compelling games" that Maguire speaks of?

Andrew Yoon
March 26, 2007

Source: PSP Fanboy

Off Topic: University: Gaming addiction is real but over-diagnosed

Research at the U.K's University of Bolton says that gaming addiction may be over-diagnosed up to 10 percent of the time because indicators that were previously thought to relate to a gaming addiction had been borrowed from gambling addictions; what are the odds? Those markers may not translate between the two behavior patterns as well as previously thought.

10 percent doesn't sound like a major mistake -- unless you're in that group -- but the study balances some recent reports that hype and overstate the problem. (Oh Tyra, we thought you were better than the local news.) Still, the research stresses that gaming addictions are real.

Zack Stern
March 27, 2007

Source: Joystiq

The icons of PSP hacks and homebrew development

A lot of you folks may have totally forgotten about it, but last Saturday (March 24) was a very important day for us PlayStation Portable owners. That day marked the date Sony unleashed its latest handheld to North American shores. Yes, it's been two years since we've first held the sleek black rectangular-shaped contraption in our hands and marveled at its graphical prowess and multifunctional capabilities.

Its first few months filled PSP owners with frustration though. It would be remembered that before PSPs were launched outside of Japan, Sony released its very first firmware update thus blocking homebrew for gamers around the world who just bought their handhelds. With a handful of measly launch titles, disappointing UMD movies, and no homebrew, the PSP was nothing more than an expensive piece of mp3 player for many. It wasn't surprising then to see a brand new PSP left lying around the household untouched. Until devs laid their hands on some...

The PSP development scene is right where it is right now, not because of Sony's marketing schemes, but because of the sheer ingenuity of our numerous developers. THEY made the PSP the multimedia device its creators billed it to be. THEY brought the PSP to the heights it's currently in. THEY realized the PSP's true potential. So it should not come as a surprise that this post is all about THEM.

So to celebrate the second birthday of our North American PlayStation Portables, we're going to feature the guys who really made this gadget the gadget it is now. Think of it as our own makeshift Hall of Fame for PSPs. They are the icons of PSP homebrew development.

Read the full article here...

Source: PSPUpdates