CES 2008: Sony Talks PSP's Future, Firmware, Remote Play

The PlayStation Portable is coming off a terrific year – undoubtedly its best thus far – after being given no chance at succeeding when it was first announced. John Koller, the senior product manager for PSP, is at CES and took some time to chat with 1UP news editor Patrick Klepek.

Patrick hits on a lot of good points, getting some good answers out of Koller who was relatively forthcoming, although certain answers were deflections more than anything else.

1UP: Looking at 2008, what is something you’ve wanted to see happen with the PSP but hasn’t happened yet? What do you want to do with 2008?

Koller: With 2008, we’re looking at ways to expand the social communication area and navigation area, which kind of goes in the same bubble. We’re looking to expand that area. In terms of challenges, we’re looking at ways on the gaming side to truly hit certain demographics correctly. Whether it’s snack-size or bite-size content that we put on the PSN store or larger, broader content like a Final Fantasy: Crisis Core that you put on UMD, we want to make sure we target against those demographics appropriately. I think in the past we’ve had a whole lot of games and a different variety of different demographics and different genres, but for us, we want to hone in from a marketing perspective on who these people are that we’re talking to. I think we’re getting to a good place with that; the teen demographic’s been a big thing for us this last holiday.

1UP: One of the recent firmware updates added Remote Play to PS One titles, but it was more or less secretly discovered by gamers. Here, you have a really cool, new feature that no other handheld or console can do, so why didn’t Sony make a big deal about it?

Koller: At the time of that launch, we were still testing a few things. Since it became public, you guys did all the work for us, but it’s a great feature and we want to expand Remote Play. You asked the question about what things we want to do this year and Remote Play is a big part of that. Just from a PlayStation brand perspective, you look at the PS3 installed base and the growth is very healthy there now, PSP is extremely healthy — we marry those and have them communicate and talk. How do we bring those two consumers together? A lot of our research says that is the same consumer, but how do we get them to talk? Right now, Remote Play is music, movies and photos that you can stream, but in what ways can we expand?

Check out the full interview, including an interesting tidbit on Lair, at 1UP.