John Koller: PSP to be “significant revenue driver”

John Koller, SCEA‘s Senior Marketing Manager for the PlayStation Portable, had an interesting talk with GameDaily recently about the state of the PSP. Despite having numerous competitors on different sides (the DS for gaming, the iPod and Zune for music/video, etc.), he’s quite excited about the future of the PSP, as any Senior Marketing Manager ought to be for his product.

The interview talks mostly about where the PSP ought to go in terms of broadening and sustaining its fanbase, but we do have some choice tidbits for you below.

For one thing, Koller notes that they’re expanding the fanbase… in a direction we weren’t exactly expecting the PSP to go:

We’ve been targeting the 13- to 17-year-old throughout this whole year and we’ve seen a significant amount of sales coming from that group. In fact, that’s the number one owner group now of PSPs.

In fact, I just got new quantitative data from NPD stating that the 6- to 10-year-old consumer is now starting to gravitate more towards the PSP as well… And I think that’s important as we continue to broaden this demographic, because when we launched the PSP the key demographic for us was really north of 25 years old.

More importantly, Koller also mentioned that interesting things are in store for the PSP. As he mentioned in the interview, “PSP will never be a static product; it’s a product that will continue to add some really robust features. We’ll talk about some of it at E3 and some beyond that.”

Lastly, he also talks about the future of the PSP in terms of connectivity, and how the PSP-to-PS3 connectivity will be an increasingly important part of the PSP’s future:

We are continually looking at way to expand remote play—and there’s now the ability to utilize your PSP to contact your PS3 through the Internet—but one thing we recently added in a firmware update was DLNA, which is a fascinating way to use your PSP on the road. It’s a connection between PC and PS3 and then you’re able to access your PC content through your PSP externally from the road. It’s those types of uses that I think are fascinating. If you can access videos and music and photos from your PC through your PSP utilizing the PS3 as a kind of gateway medium, that’s fantastic.

On one related note, he also makes a quip about the importance of the Lumines series as a front-runner for casual gaming on the PSP. Needless to say, Lumines is certainly important these days, but perhaps not for the reasons he mentioned.

John Koller, SCEA‘s Senior Marketing Manager for the PlayStation Portable, had an interesting talk with GameDaily recently about the state of the PSP. Despite having numerous competitors on different sides (the DS for gaming, the iPod and Zune for music/video, etc.), he’s quite excited about the future of the PSP, as any Senior Marketing Manager ought to be for his product.

The interview talks mostly about where the PSP ought to go in terms of broadening and sustaining its fanbase, but we do have some choice tidbits for you below.

For one thing, Koller notes that they’re expanding the fanbase… in a direction we weren’t exactly expecting the PSP to go:

We’ve been targeting the 13- to 17-year-old throughout this whole year and we’ve seen a significant amount of sales coming from that group. In fact, that’s the number one owner group now of PSPs.

In fact, I just got new quantitative data from NPD stating that the 6- to 10-year-old consumer is now starting to gravitate more towards the PSP as well… And I think that’s important as we continue to broaden this demographic, because when we launched the PSP the key demographic for us was really north of 25 years old.

More importantly, Koller also mentioned that interesting things are in store for the PSP. As he mentioned in the interview, “PSP will never be a static product; it’s a product that will continue to add some really robust features. We’ll talk about some of it at E3 and some beyond that.”

Lastly, he also talks about the future of the PSP in terms of connectivity, and how the PSP-to-PS3 connectivity will be an increasingly important part of the PSP’s future:

We are continually looking at way to expand remote play—and there’s now the ability to utilize your PSP to contact your PS3 through the Internet—but one thing we recently added in a firmware update was DLNA, which is a fascinating way to use your PSP on the road. It’s a connection between PC and PS3 and then you’re able to access your PC content through your PSP externally from the road. It’s those types of uses that I think are fascinating. If you can access videos and music and photos from your PC through your PSP utilizing the PS3 as a kind of gateway medium, that’s fantastic.

On one related note, he also makes a quip about the importance of the Lumines series as a front-runner for casual gaming on the PSP. Needless to say, Lumines is certainly important these days, but perhaps not for the reasons he mentioned.