Q&A: Sony's John Koller Talks PSP's Downloadable Future

Sony's PSP is, as ever, a puzzling contradiction.

Industry pundits thought the powerful portable game player would outsell the DS, but Nintendo's touchscreen handheld has now moved more than 100 million units worldwide, as compared to Sony's 50 million. Sales of PSP in February were down 18 percent versus last year. When the two systems launched in 2004, Sony said Nintendo's kid-friendly image would doom the DS to a younger audience, but it's the PSP that sells mainly to teenagers while Nintendo brings in adults with software like Brain Age.

PSP's ability to download content onto a Memory Stick should have given it a huge advantage in the age of digital distribution, but the online PlayStation Store has been slow to get going. Very much like Nintendo, it is in danger of having some of its market swallowed by Apple and the iPhone unless it figures out how to compete in the age of games on demand.

John Koller, Sony's head of PlayStation marketing, wants that to change. He's committed to ramping up the amount of content in the PSP store, overhauling the user experience and launching upcoming games like LittleBigPlanet in direct-download form.

Wired.com spoke with Koller for Monday's feature on the portable gaming market. The full transcript of the Q&A is below.

Wired.com: The big story these days is iPhone, DSiWare, downloadable content on portable gaming systems. So let's start off with an overview of where Sony is right now with downloadable games on PSP.

John Koller: Holistically, the idea of digital distribution fits into the world as we go forward. Not to say that retail isn't of extreme importance, because it is. But the idea of offering content to consumers, to make it easy, you can wake up in the morning, download something and go, it's very appealing. So one of our big pushes this year is to be sure that the right kind of content and the right kind of games in particular are placed on the PlayStation Network for download on the PSP.

We've been engaged in a wide range of conversations with publishers over the last year, year and a half about software and games overall on the PSP. One significant topic that hasn't necessarily been covered a lot is inclusion of digital copies of the games that they're launching on [Universal Media Discs, or] UMDs. In the back half of this year, we should see a good rise in the amount of content that comes to PSN for the PSP. We're aware that most of the content thus far has been for PlayStation 3, and that's based on the usage model and who has been demanding that content. But as we continue, and there's more of a desire from the consumer for PSP content, we're going to really increase the size and amount of content that's available.

Wired.com: Why the back half of this year? What changes between now and then that makes it a better time to put things on the PlayStation Network for PSP?

Koller: Much of it has to do with the development cycle. A lot of the big games that we announced at Destination PlayStation a few weeks ago had UMD (versions) that will be launching in the second half of the year. And marrying those launches with the digital versions of those launches obviously makes development sense. We're looking at a wide range of content throughout the year, but the back half will be heavier than the first.

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