It’s no secret that third party developers have been slow to embrace the PSP, leading to the dearth of games available on Sony’s barren handheld system. According to a former SCEE Technology Group employee, the platform holder itselfcould be doing a lot moreto make the PSP an attractive proposition, especially in Europe.
“There’s always room for improvement in everything, but if you look at third party relations in the US, they’re a little more integrated than in Europe,” explains Sebastien Rubens. “The second step is to have a better SDK – iPhone’s is better. You could make things a lot easier to use, and I come from the software engineering side.
“After that it’s a problem of the market and deciding what it wants, including prices for downloadable games, so people know what kind of games to make — in other words, not aGTA, even if PSP is technically capable of running it, because the economics don’t make it worth it. And in the submission process, they’re a bit too slow to move.”
According to Rubens, he is just one of several developers looking for more support from Sony. It’s a common consensus (among sane people who don’t think Sony is flawless) that Sony could have done way more with the PSP, instead of throwing it onto store shelves without a sense of identity, any sort of apparent goal or a game library that would grow. It’s great that Sony is finally trying to support the system more this year, but it’s a bit late after five years of bugger-all.
