14 DAY TRIAL // In 2008 and early 2009, developers threatened to stop creating games for the PlayStation Portable platform from Sony because of piracy, so the company launched a new version, the Go, which was supposed to get all its content via download and be piracy-proof. But now it seems that the overall user experience offered by the PSP might be driving some developers off.
Gavin Cheshire, who is a vice president of Codemasters, told Edge that “Well, speaking as a person who bought a PSP, the problem was that I always thought, because it was a better screen than iPod's, that I'd be doing more with it. But it was such a bollocking useless waste of space; just getting stuff on it was ridiculous. That was its downfall.”
Apparently, the PSP problems at Codemasters extend to the new Go version, which has no removable battery and no UMD drive, with one vice president needing assistance from the customer support department immediately after he bought the handheld.
Codemasters is putting out PlayStation Portable versions for some of its titles, with F1 2009 getting a release on the Sony handheld, which may have sold enough to keep the developer satisfied. It's not clear whether Codemasters is actually taking into account the personal experiences with the platform when it comes to future planning, but if more developers become disappointed with the Sony console, its future might indeed by tough.
The PSP has continued to perform well in Japan but the NPD Group numbers released for North America show it is trailing behind the rival Nintendo DS line. The Go version is also a failure and more and more rumors are saying that Sony is working on a PSP 2, which might be unveiled this year, maybe alongside the Nintendo DS2, another handheld that is predicted to be shown off at E3.