PSP game prices unveiled
As low as €20, as high as €60, says Chris Deering.
PlayStation Portable (PSP) games will cost between £15 and £40, SCEE president Chris Deering revealed yesterday at ELSPA's first annual Games Summit.
Released on the optical UMD format, he said games for the system may be priced "as high as €50 or €60 no doubt, but probably the mass of games given the time slots these will be played in will be more the £20 range, €20-€30."
Movies and music, meanwhile, will also be released on the format, with movies expected to retail at a price "less than a DVD", and music possibly also cheaper than current CD prices.
Deering confirmed the PSP would be released in the second half of next year, although he shied away from promising a simultaneous worldwide launch: "It's technically possible, but you can only make so many a day, so I would imagine it might be a slight time difference between the Japan launch and, US and Europe."
But in a move sure to rile everyone with a pulse, Deering mentioned that region coding will be included. "There's no difference between PAL and NTSC, [but] there will be region codes for movies." Damn their eyes. Have they learned nothing from the farcical DVD region coding? We can only hope gaming is unaffected by this.
Meanwhile, on the inevitable topic of competing with the GBA, Deering went as far as throwing an arm around Nintendo, suggesting it could be "synergistic and dynamically collaborative with Game Boy". How very heart-warming.
"Maybe it might compete with people on the planes, but in the school yard I don't think people will be able to walk around with the PSP and treat it as roughly as you do with Game Boy," or in other words any 13-year-old walking around a comprehensive would be shit scared of having it nicked by the bullies, eh Chris?
Clearly, Sony sees the PSP as the perfect device for the attention deficit among us "It's trying for a new part of the market to escape the TV, for the shorter leisure time slots that seem to be a factor."
Source: Indie Magazine