The Grand Theft Auto franchise is one of the most popular series of video games out there, with a massive fan base across all platforms on which its iterations were released. The most recent title is Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars for the Nintendo DS, Rockstar's newest venture on a handheld console, after the Liberty City and Vice City stories that graced the PlayStation Portable.

Seeing this move to Nintendo's platform, a lot of analysts proclaimed that another nail was driven into the coffin of the PSP. But Sony's head of PSP hardware marketing in North America, John Koller, begs to differ, and has revealed to MTV Multiplayer that his company is in permanent talks with Rockstar in order to develop new projects.

“No one should sleep on that franchise. That’s a tremendous franchise for PlayStation in general. We’ve had two that are the top two sellers on PSP right now. So, there’s definitely continued conversations with Rockstar on all their brands. That’s nothing that’s left the PlayStation family. To be honest, Rockstar has to manage their business as they see fit. We’re very good partners with them. They just launched ‘The Lost and the Damned‘ for 360, so, they need to make their own business decisions. But we certainly have a tremendous relationship with them and always have.”

He also expressed his opinion on the fact that Chinatown Wars arrived on the DS, a platform popular with small children, under 12, very far the target audience of that title, of over 17, “It’s an interesting launch on DS. It raises some eyebrows in a lot of areas. It’ll be interesting to see how that sells.”

With such statements, coupled with the new development strategy from Sony, which focuses on the PSP, it seems that the Japanese handheld will become quite strong in the future.