Didier Malenfant explains Ready at Dawn’s departure from PSP development

Ready At Dawn‘s president Didier Malenfant recently elaborated on the reasons for the studio’s decision to end their development for the Sony PSP. Among other things, the exec discussed his studio’s future plans, and how piracy may have affected their decision. More details are available in the full article.

A few days ago, Ready at Dawn Studios broke the news that it was done developing games for the Sony PSP. It was a point the studio drove home by returning all of its corresponding dev kits to Sony. While this was a rather jarring turn of events, Ready at Dawn president Didier Malenfant stepped up recently to shed some light on the studio’s decision.

For one, Malenfant explained that they had done everything they wanted to for the PSP with the release of Daxter and God of War: Chain of Olympus. There were other projects to focus on for other platforms. There was also the matter of piracy being a possible cause for the pullout, as some of the readers here commented in our last report. According to Malenfant, however, both of their titles were enjoying healthy sales:

We sold over 2.3 millions copies of Daxter and are on track to beat that with Chains of Olympus so we’re pretty happy with our sale. Could we sell more games if piracy was non-existent? Maybe. But we don’t target the market that could be, we target the market that is.

Speaking more regarding Ready at Dawn’s future plans, Malenfant noted that the studio actually has two new IPs under development. The studio also has ideas for one of their existing IPs, although Malenfant didn’t provide any specifics details during the inquiry.

With most of their dev plans now heading for the next-gen system, does this mean that the studio is truly leaving the PSP scene? Well, yes and no: Malenfant noted that there might be a possibility that some of their future games might see a PSP port. On the other hand, they currently have no plans to create games specific to the handheld.