14 DAY TRIAL // The PlayStation Portable hasn't had the best career as, despite its hardware power, it didn't get the same rich game library that its biggest rival, the Nintendo DS received. While a lot of people who bought it used it for MP3 playing purposes, for photo sharing, even for the Internet browser it had, not a lot of people found interesting games that they could play.
But it now seems that despite this big shortcoming for a portable console, the PSP has achieved the very big milestone of 50 million units sold across the world. While the number may seem pretty big, let's not forget that it was launched over 4 years ago, with Sony claiming that it would become a worldwide phenomenon.
Sadly it wasn't so, but now the Japanese company, through the voice of its UK product manager, Claire Backhouse, says that big franchises will arrive on the small handheld in the near future. She goes on to say that, although things haven't been looking so good for the PSP games-wise, the tide will shift soon enough and it will once again stir the interest of hardcore gamers.
“This year we are also launching a host of significant PlayStation IPs on the PSP platform, the first being Resistance Retribution, which will help drive sales,” Backhouse said.“It’s these core IPs that we believe will help broaden the appeal of PSP. Granted, perhaps there hasn’t been the volume of high profile PSP titles we would have liked to have seen on the platform. But, that said, we continue to focus heavily on software development. The fruits of this you’ll see later this year, with the release of a number of currently unannounced, yet significant franchises that will re-invigorate the current user base, as well as attracting a whole new audience.”
It definitely seems that Sony is very focused on the portable console and that it will try in the future to bring more and more high-quality games to it. For the sake of those 50 million users out there we also hope that the Japanese company will try its best.