PSP World

Sony Drops Price of PSP Development Kits

In an effort to spur development for its handheld console, Sony Computer Entertainment today announced that it is reducing the price of PSP development kits. This hardware is necessary for developing PSP software titles, and companies often buy several of these special units to assist the development of their games. The price of PSP dev kits will now drop to JPY150,000 in Japan, US $ 1,500 in North America and €1,200 in Europe/PAL territories, effective immediately.

By offering PSP Development Tools at a very attractive price, SCE hopes to provide a more affordable game development environment for a broader range of developers and publishers, further enhancing the software lineup for the PSP system.

As of March 2009, worldwide sales of the PSP system exceeded 51.6 million units, a remarkable milestone for the first handheld platform from the PlayStation family. To further grow the installed base of the PSP system and to enhance its software line-up, SCE will also provide ProDG for PSP, a highly acclaimed powerful programming tool which helps to improve productivity of software development, as part of PSP Software Development Kit without an additional charge. Also effective today, Testing Tool models DTP-H2500A and DTP-H2500, the tools utilized for quality assurance for PSP titles under development, will also become available at an affordable price of JPY100,000 in Japan, US $ 1,000 in North America and €800 in Europe/PAL territories. By providing a lower-cost game development environment, SCE will contribute to meet the needs of various game development styles and accelerate software development for the PSP system.

As part of the measures to support a broader range of developers and publishers to create varieties of small software titles, SCE will aim to provide a development environment within this calendar year that will allow creators to develop more casual, exciting and attractive content to be made available for the ever growing PlayStation Network users around the world by streamlining the process from license agreement to publishing for small, download exclusive software titles. These games are probably destined for digital distribution on the PSP Go.

SCEI is taking other various measures to further reinforce game development for PSP and will continue to expand the platform to offer attractive interactive entertainment experiences only available on PSP.

A PSP development tool being used in the wild. Image credit: Tom's Hardware.

[Source: Sony official statement]