PSP World

Does EA 'Get' the PSP?

Electronic Arts is considered one of the premier video game publishers in the world, with $4.2 billion USD in revenue and more than 7,000 employees spread among a dozen studios. The Redwood, California company accumulated legions of fans initially for its pitch-perfect sports games, but has since grown to encompass nearly all genres of digital entertainment. EA games are also available on just about every format under the sun, from Xbox Live to the Nintendo DS. For all of its successes, there is one platform that the publishing giant has not been able to successfully crack - Sony's PSP.

Looking at the list of top-selling games for the lifetime of the PSP console, it is clear that Electronic Arts has had some early but limited success. Its Need for Speed: Most Wanted managed to crack the top-ten releases for the system, and has sold an estimated 2 million copies worldwide since its release back in 2005. This is surprising because while it was a competent racer, it didn't exactly bring anything new to the table (Gamespot awarded it a tepid 6.9/10 in its review). The problem is that since then, no EA release has done nearly as well on the handheld. Even Konami has managed to outsell the perennial soccer favorite FIFA on the PSP with its own Winning 11 series ahead by nearly 250,000 copies. It is clear from looking at these sales numbers that competitors Rockstar Games, Capcom and even Sony have the system sussed out better than EA has been able to do.

Heading into 2010, it is not clear that Electronic Arts has any sure-fire winners lined up for the PSP, suggesting that the mega-publisher has all but abandoned Sony's diminutive device. And that's too bad, because with the launch of the PSP Go and a new level of commitment from Sony, there is no better time to be publishing software on the machine.

It is likely that some large publishers, spurned by high levels of piracy and relatively paltry sales figures, decided early on to shift development away from the handheld (EA is not alone in this - where is Activision in the top-ten sales list?) Sony itself became frustrated with poor performance of the machine in 2006, and pointed the finger partly at developers like EA, who were churning out quick and dirty ports of popular franchises without doing sufficient quality assurance. It is hard to sell a gaming device to consumers when most of its new releases are bad, expensive versions of titles that look and play better on consoles.

So the hardware maker decided to try a different approach. Last year Sony Marketing Director John Koller went, literally, on the offensive. Touring development studios at a frantic pace, Sony execs gave out technical advice and worked as ambassadors for a new development approach: no more cheap ports. If games were going to be successful on the PSP, Sony reasoned, they would have to offer gamers an original experience that they couldn't get anywhere else, and which was tailored specifically for the handheld. Again, the sales figures up until that point showed that new games which built on established franchises were doing the best.

Did EA get the memo when Koller passed it around in 2008? It seems that if they did, they chose to soundly ignore it. Sony's upcoming hack-and-slash adventure Dante's Inferno will appear nearly simultaneously on the Xbox 360, PS3 and PSP. In fact, all of EA's upcoming PSP releases are ports of console games: Fifa 10, Madden 10, tiger Woods 10 and Need for Speed: Shift are all PSP-bound. It is difficult to argue that any of these games offer a substantially new experience on the handheld - the best we can hope for is that they do a reasonable job of simulating the home experience.

This approach is not what will sell software or hardware. Sony and some publishers have got it figured out, but so far, EA doesn't seem to get it.

Need for Speed Shift on the PSP doesn't offer many improvements over the console game. Which version would you rather play?