Is Xbox Live Killing the PSP?

When looking at all of the support the PSP has received in Japan, it is easy for us here in North America to feel a little bit left out. With a seriously scaled-back release calendar, many die-hard PSP owners find themselves waiting for the next Patapon or Monster Hunter title to get the Enlgish localization treatment. Where once there was a promise of a torrent of new games for the sleek handheld, now there is merely a dribble.

Looking to get to the bottom of this mystery, our friends over at Edge decided to count the exact number of releases from third-party developers on the system. They found that the number of releases has significantly dropped off in North America.

Looking forward to 2008, it seems as if the story becomes even more grim. Without any unexpected announcements, the upcoming release schedule looks very slim, punctuated by a few high-profile games like Resistance: Retribution and Final Fantasy: Dissidia.

What has caused this decline? Edge blames piracy and the poor performance of franchises like GTA for steering potential publishers away from the system. We believe there might be another reason for the decline in interest for the handheld device among Western developers: the popularity of download services like Xbox Live. Thinking about the kind of games that might be insanely popular on the PSP (such as Lumines, Patapon, and Puzzle Quest) we find that many of these types of casual games have increasingly found a market as downloadable purchases on the home consoles.

Distributing a low-budget game over XBLA or the Wii Shop Channel certainly must be appealing to smaller developers. They reduce their exposure to piracy, while simultaneously lowering overhead costs (no publisher, no box, no CD required).

In short, services like XBLA are killing the PSP, in our estimation. But it doesn't have to be that way. If Sony can show that there exists an additional market outside of the casual home-console crowd, then perhaps they can convince these same developers to bring their titles over to the PSP. This has already been the strategywith games like Super Stardust Portable. We would certainly welcome the opportunity to play more great games like Pirates vs. Ninjas Dodgeball and 1942: Joint Strike on the PSP.

1942: Joint Strike would so rule on the PSP.

[Via: Edge Magazine]