Handheld gaming is becoming more and more popular these days, as ever more portable devices are being sold so that people can entertain themselves when they are on the go. While Nintendo has the casual handheld gaming in its clutches thanks to the DS, Sony still wants to attract the more experienced customers through the PlayStation Portable.

But the console has never really become as popular as the Japanese company would have liked it to, especially in territories like Europe or North America. Slowly but surely though, the console did manage to sell 50 million units, a number that made Sony pledge to bring a lot of titles to it.

Now, Sony Computer Entertainment UK Vice President Ray Maguire has emphasized that commitment and has explained a bit that, due to the PlayStation 3 occupying the engineering resources of the company, the PSP has been “slightly under-supported,” though with the growing popularity, both retailers and developers will get behind it.

“It was slightly under-supported, mainly because a lot of the energy was going into stuff we're doing for PlayStation 3,” Maguire says. “There was an added complication in that the UMD model wasn't brilliant for third parties, either. But I think as the installed base has grown – we're now at 50 million globally – the PSP has become one of the best-selling formats ever, and I think people are seeing that they need to get back into it. I think we had a bit of a barren year last year, and this year we seem to have a bumper crop. This year is the year that PSP puts its head up proudly.”

A lot of gamers and critics will agree that “under-supported” is a bit of an under-statement, as the PSP has been very deprived of games for quite some time, and people have only bought it for its multimedia options, like music and video playback, or the Wi-Fi features.

With franchises like LittleBigPlanet, Motorstorm, Resistance, or, presumably, God of War bringing iterations for the small portable device, perhaps more and more people will decide to use it for games.