John Koller: happy birthday PSP, Sony’s handheld growing strong

March 24 is marked as the official release date of the PSP in the U.S. and the PSP is now two years old. In light of this, Game Informer checked up with Sony‘s Senior Marketing Manager John Koller to get some retrospective feedback on the PSP, straight from the horse’s mouth.

Overall the progress of the PSP has been exactly as Sony had planned it out. The PSP was built with a feature-rich mindset, and so the team behind the handheld focused greatly on how to deliver titles that would show off its abilities in portable gaming.

The result? They’ve got 250 games available for it, and majority of those titles are first-party developed. While third-party developers and publishers have been optimistic on the handheld’s performance, Sony has been busy adding even more features to try to make the handheld an multi-entertainment package.

The PSP now is much like the PlayStation 3, but fits in your pocket. According to Koller, even the UMD side is looking great. While there have been companies thinking twice about pushing out their products to UMD, a great number of them have jumped at the opportunity to distribute their action-packed or comedic movie titles to the PSP proprietary format.

Even music albums are making a debut to the compact “compact disc,” which Sony has been eyeing as the top number two use of the PSP, aside from gaming. While majority of the PSP bracket is only the “13 – 17 years old” slice of the age pie, Sony has also been widening their target range for the more mobile adults and even the younger folk.

Expect more marketing pitches aimed at a wider target population this year. But perhaps the one real thing to celebrate about the PSP is that it carved itself a mold to foster a growing market, amidst all the other handheld and mobile gaming platforms already available in the market.

By trying to cover all bases for a new generation of entertainment seekers, the PSP has begun to adapt as a cultural technological status symbol, much like a cellphone and the iPod has been for the other gadget-inclined folk. So here’s to the PSP, a year well-spent and another year to go. Koller mentioned that the PSP has a ton of great things coming for it, so probably this toast’s for the many more years to come.

March 24 is marked as the official release date of the PSP in the U.S. and the PSP is now two years old. In light of this, Game Informer checked up with Sony‘s Senior Marketing Manager John Koller to get some retrospective feedback on the PSP, straight from the horse’s mouth.

Overall the progress of the PSP has been exactly as Sony had planned it out. The PSP was built with a feature-rich mindset, and so the team behind the handheld focused greatly on how to deliver titles that would show off its abilities in portable gaming.

The result? They’ve got 250 games available for it, and majority of those titles are first-party developed. While third-party developers and publishers have been optimistic on the handheld’s performance, Sony has been busy adding even more features to try to make the handheld an multi-entertainment package.

The PSP now is much like the PlayStation 3, but fits in your pocket. According to Koller, even the UMD side is looking great. While there have been companies thinking twice about pushing out their products to UMD, a great number of them have jumped at the opportunity to distribute their action-packed or comedic movie titles to the PSP proprietary format.

Even music albums are making a debut to the compact “compact disc,” which Sony has been eyeing as the top number two use of the PSP, aside from gaming. While majority of the PSP bracket is only the “13 – 17 years old” slice of the age pie, Sony has also been widening their target range for the more mobile adults and even the younger folk.

Expect more marketing pitches aimed at a wider target population this year. But perhaps the one real thing to celebrate about the PSP is that it carved itself a mold to foster a growing market, amidst all the other handheld and mobile gaming platforms already available in the market.

By trying to cover all bases for a new generation of entertainment seekers, the PSP has begun to adapt as a cultural technological status symbol, much like a cellphone and the iPod has been for the other gadget-inclined folk. So here’s to the PSP, a year well-spent and another year to go. Koller mentioned that the PSP has a ton of great things coming for it, so probably this toast’s for the many more years to come.