14 DAY TRIAL // Trophies have been available on the PlayStation 3 for quite some time and gamers, always wanting more out of gaming companies, have been requesting that Sony also implemented them on the PlayStation Portable handheld. This would allow gamers to increase their ever important PlayStation Rank from both devices and would make some releases for the handheld more attractive to others.
Unfortunately, Eric Lempel, a representative of Sony, recently told Joystiq that “You're not going to see Trophies on the PSP.” It really does not get any more final than that, so fans should probably get PlayStation 3 titles if they are interested in Trophies and Ranks.
Apparently, the main reason behind Sony's decision is tied to the piracy problem that has plagued its handheld in the last years. If people are able to hack into the PlayStation Portable in order to run pirated games, then the same people will be able to hack it in order to make sure that they get all the Trophies a videogame has to offer.
Also, some people might even release tools enabling any gamers to get all the Trophies, which would defeat the point of implementing them, or, as Sony puts it, will “articially inflate rankings and the amount of Trophies.”
More importantly, because any implementation would be cross platform, allowing Trophies to be shared between the PSP and the PlayStation 3, the two hardware platforms that Sony maintains would be affected.
It will be interesting to see whether Sony changes its position when the PlayStation Portable Go! is released later in 2009. Since it does not have a UMD drive and gets all content via digital distribution, the new device will probably be less affected by piracy and hackers, allowing for Trophies to be implemented on it. We'll probably learn more as fall approaches.