Sony Reiterate The 10-Year Life-Cycle Of The PSP

.. And fast. Alas, an interview with SCEA's John Koller seems to suggest disagreement on the manufacturer's part - noting that Sony are still on a 10-year life-cycle with the PSP.

Speaking with Joystiq, Koller noted that the handheld sector is important for the PlayStation business, and will remain for as long as its parent exists.

“There is absolutely a 10-year life cycle for PSP, and probably more,” he said . “We’ve talked about ‘We’ll be in the PSP business as long as we’re in the PlayStation business’, because we absolutely believe in handheld.

“Unequivocally we think it’s a fantastic place to be, and I can tell you that I think my group particularly – the hardware group – fully believes in handheld because there’s different demographics that you can touch and bring in to the PlayStation world through it that you may not always be able to do through other avenues.

“You can touch older females, older males, younger children, you can kind of piece all of these different target audiences and demographics under a handheld umbrella much more seamlessly.

“I think it’s a long term opportunity and we will stay in it. Now in terms of where we are in the current life cycle, I think we’re just kind of hitting our stride. We just announced that we hit 60 million units worldwide, which is a very good number for PSP, we’ve got a lot of good development support.

“We always say a platform will turn off when the development spicket turns off. We’ve got 70 games coming this year, we’ve got 70-80 coming next year – it’s just a very healthy platform.

“I don’t think we’d be spending investment to the tune that we are without full belief that this is a go-forward platform.”

This isn't the first time Sony has practically shot-down the PSP2, but speculation from the development side continues to suggest that the PSP2 is in the wilderness. We'll just have to wait and see if it ever makes an appearance. It looks less and less likely as time goes by, however.

Still, despite the majority of the games media overlooking it, there's actually a ton of great content coming to the PSP this year, and we'll have you covered for all of it.