John Koller Defends PSP, Calls it a "Teen Hype" Product

When asked some tough questions about the PSP, Sony marketing director John Koller was forced to go on the defensive, arguing that the best is still to come for the company's handheld machine. In the challenging interview with IGN editors, Koller was asked to comment on the overall prospects for the device, the lack of upcoming game releases, and the problem with ports.

On the hardware sales side, Koller suggested that the company has changed its marketing strategy to focus more heavily on the 15-16 year old demographic, rather than pitching the PSP as an adult consumer product. He also brought up the often-repeated story about integration with PS3 titles, although we have not seen very many games take advantage of this feature so far.

"We launched at a time in 2005 when it was more of an older consumer that was getting into it. We're at a point now where this is a teen proposition -- 15, 16 year olds. We're schooled regularly in focus groups on how easy it is to put PSPs and hide them in books, the back of classrooms, and things of that nature. It's much more of a teen type product now. I think as we go forward, we're going to see a lot more integration with PlayStation 3, particularly as the install base of the PS3 continues to grow stratospherically in many ways, and the integration that is going to occur there is part and parcel of the strategy that the PS3 is the living room hub and really where your entertainment flows."

Outlining his strategy for new game releases, Koller promised that the current lack of quality games would soon be addressed by publishers who only began working on new titles following the successful re-launch of the PSP-Slim. He also stated that the company was strongly pushing third-party publishers to stay away from ports and instead try to publish more original content based on pre-existing franchises. Koller also promised some big announcements at E3, although he could not go into specifics or name any individual publishers.

"The key to success in publishing on the PSP is to launch larger franchise games with unique gameplay underneath. That's a non-port type strategy. That's something like a God of War or Crisis Core where it's a large brand name, it's a very good game from a quality standpoint, but it's unique. You can't play it on console, and it avoids the cannibalization that you would get from someone who may own a console and play their PSP at home, which is a common occurrence. Given that situation, many consumers were choosing one or the other, and that's not a situation that we want to put a consumer in."

We are happy to hear that Sony is taking the problem with ports seriously. However, since Koller was not able to go into any detail about upcoming game releases, we will have to wait until E3 to find out what might be coming down the pipeline for the handheld. Overall, the tone of the interview left us feeling a little bit uncertain about the future of the PSP, but also gave the sense that the company is working very hard to fix problems with the device.