Koller: PSP software decline to reverse by 2009

While John Koller, SCEA‘s director of hardware marketing, admits that PSP software support has been dwindling steadily for the past couple of years, he believes that recent surges in the handheld’s hardware sales will help boost software sales soon. How soon? Koller estimates that Sony‘s push for more games on the handheld will bear fruit by 2009.

While John Koller, SCEA‘s director of hardware marketing, admits that PSP software support has been dwindling steadily for the past couple of years, he believes that recent surges in the handheld’s hardware sales will help boost software sales soon.

“WeÂ’ve gone to every publisher and theyÂ’ve been noticing the hardware is on fire,” he told Edge Online. Apparently, Sony had conducted a tour of major publishers to “calibrate and educate” them on the PSP and what kind of software it needs. Here’s a hint: it ain’t ports.

“The recipe for success on the PSP resides simply in providing franchise games that are strong brand names like on consoles, but have unique gameplay on the system,” Koller said. “You cannot have ports.”

Examples given were God of War: Chains of Olympus, Crisis Core: Final Fantasy 7, and the upcoming Midnight Club: LA Remix. According to Koller, these three games “are titles that have very strong brand names on console but are coming over with unique gameplay on the PSP.”

This is all well and good, but when will all this happen? Koller said we should be seeing “significant growth” by next year.

“We have a number of very strong franchise games on the docket that will be launching next year. We havenÂ’t gone public with those, and many third-parties have not yet either because theyÂ’re concentrating on holiday, but we have a number of very strong titles coming.”

The upcoming release of the PSP-3000 should also factor into this, as hardware sales seem to be the driving force behind Sony’s bid to curb software decline. There are a few PSP games worth mentioning (Valhalla Knights 2 and Star Ocean: First Departure come to mind. Yeah, I’m a bit of an RPG freak) that are scheduled for this Fall, so at least we’ll have something to play while we’re waiting for the fruits of Sony’s labor.

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Via Edge Online