Many believe that whilst the PlayStation Portable has been a decent success in the face of the rampant sales of Nintendo’s DS portable format, the platform has been let down by a severe lack of interesting new software from developers. With nothing particularly different to the PlayStation 2 appearing in the system’s first generation, software sales petered out. However, Sony believes that situation is now about to change.

Unfortunately, though, it may well be too late since piracy is currently running rampant on the company’s first ever portable gaming system, and since the process of going down such a route is extremely simple nowadays, gamers are more likely to avoid the high costs of the PSP titles, no matter how intriguing or impressive they may be in the future. This situation has been noticed in all territories as well, where the new PSP Slim format has spurred on hardware sales considerably, yet no games have really made much of an impact in the charts. The only real exception would be Monster Hunter Portable 2nd in Japan, which has sold over 1.6 million copies, with its upgrade, Monster Hunter Portable 2nd G becoming the fastest selling PSP game in Japan this week, with around 677,000 units sold on its first day of release!

Considering the system has been on the market since 2005 this really is a sad state of affairs. But Sony’s marketing boss insists that developers will woo gamers yet as they realise just what makes an attractive product for the system.

“Developers and publishers are now just starting to see what the keys to success are on the PSP. It’s not like the console world at all, and it’s something we’ve been preaching for a while [ with big franchises like God of War and Daxter making appearances in unique, handheld-specific ways ]. [ The main key to success is ] making a unique game under that umbrella and making it creative and have it be something that you can’t play on console.

“One thing we’ve noticed is that about one-in-two, about fifty per cent of consumers, are using the PSP at home. And if they are then…they don’t want to buy the same console game that they play on a handheld. So, to avoid that kind of competitive play, a lot of developers and publishers are starting to say, ‘all right, maybe it’s time we start making games that are unique to that system under a strong umbrella.’”
- John Koller, Sony’s PlayStation Portable Head of Marketing

Finishing off, Koller also mentioned how there will be several new important announcements related to the PSP and how they will show how the system can be expanded beyond its current state. Perhaps he is pertaining to the Global Positioning System already released in Japan? “We have a number of key announcements that’ll be made in the next few months that’ll be kind of expansionary in what the PSP can do.”

Stick around for more updates here on Playstatic…