14 DAY TRIAL // Sony has just promised, through the boss of its European division, that the Next Generation Portable device, aka the PSP2, will get day-and-date digital releases, in order to motivate gamers to use the PlayStation Network online service.
Sony has learned its lesson from the PSP Go, a portable console that relied only on digital releases, which failed to attract people because many games, especially from third-party publishers, weren't released at the same time on the PSN, as opposed to retail stores, where they appeared on UMD drives, which weren't supported by the PSP Go.
With the Next Generation Portable, the company knows what to do, as confirmed by Sony Computer Entertainment Europe boss Andrew House.
“One thing we learnt from PSP, is that we want to have simultaneous delivery in digital and physical for NGP. Just to clarify that, all games that appear physically will be made available digitally. Not necessarily all games have to be made available physically. And having the option of a digital-only method affords more creative risk-taking, and that’s because you don’t-have that in-built risk of physical inventory,” explained House to MCV.
Everyone will benefit from such a strategy, both gamers who want to play on the go and don't have time to visit retail stores, as well as developers and publishers, who will have an easier time releasing titles for the device.
“That is one of the attractions of having a hybrid approach to distribution. You have maximum flexibility,” he said. “Publishers will start to look at distribution methods depending on the size of content. Clearly if you have big blockbuster games, then downloading them is perhaps not the best experience,” he added.
According to the Sony executive, big games will see retail releases on the new memory card-based physical storage medium, while smaller titles, including indie or PS minis ones, will only be released as digital downloads on the PlayStation Store.
While the idea sounds very good, Sony needs to really improve the infrastructure of its PlayStation Network if it hopes to satisfy all the future NGP owners.