14 DAY TRIAL // Sony has admitted that the PlayStation Portable is some sort of a disappointment and there are quite a lot of rumors swirling around about how the hardware manufacturer is getting ready to show off a successor at the E3 presentation it will hold in the middle of June. But recent statements from a Sony executive suggest the company has not given up entirely on the old, UMD-powered PSP.
Talking to industry-oriented site Gamasutra, Rob Dyer, who is the senior vice president for publisher relations at Sony Computer Entertainment of America, said, “A lot of the stuff that will be announced at E3 we're very excited about, because they are huge titles.” He then went on to talk about how touching it is to create good content for a platform basically under attack, stating “That's been the biggest problem, no question about it. It's become a very difficult proposition to be profitable, given the piracy right now.”
Sony tried to tackle piracy with the PlayStation Portable Go, which did not have a removable battery (usually the entry way for pirates) and received all its content through digital distribution, but while the system looked good in theory, players were not actually drawn to it, probably because of the high price and because there was no way to play PSP games already bought on UMD drives.
Dyer is revealing Sony is working on a solution that will limit piracy in the first month or two after a PSP videogame comes out, with developers being helped to implement it in their upcoming titles.
Nintendo has already announced a handheld, called the 3DS, set to offer full three dimensional gaming without the use of special glasses and coming out in late 2011 or early 2011. Any new Sony device will also need to compete with the Apple made iPhone and iPad.