Atari fed-up with PSP and UMD
Atari seem to be giving the PSP a bit of a miss as most of the games they are planning to release over the next couple of months will not be available for the Sony Portable console. Hmmm…maybe it has something to do with the new set of rumours floating about the blog-waves that Sony ARE indeed getting ready to whip out the PSP2 to a shelf near you? Well that is speculation and shouldn’t really be given too much president…but what is going through Atari’s heads?
Atari definitely have their pro-Nintendo hats on for 2009 as they will be releasing more games for the DS than for the PSP, even though the amount of games that they will be making available for the DS is pretty lame too.
It’s understandable though why Atari are a little concerned about releasing new games for the PSP as the console has seen quite a disappointing time recently with software sales.
However, Atari have a small special place still sectioned off for Sony’s PSP – but not for UMD games. Atari have announced that they will be moving into the download field when it comes to the PSP, through the wireless Playstation store. In a way the move gives Atari a bit of security as they won’t have to worry about there being thousands of games left on the shelves when people don’t want to buy them.
Sony boss Phil Harrison kept people guessing by saying, “we have published on PSP and I’m sure we will continue to publish on PSP; we didn’t have any announcements to make today. There is no doubt that PSP is a very vibrant platform from a hardware perspective and I think Sony has recently made some good moves into opening up online distribution for software on PSP, so I’m looking to explore that.”
UMD has been fairly unsuccessful in the past and this is simply Atari’s attempt to move away from the format without losing a whole PSP section of customers.
However, it would seem that Atari have bigger things on their minds. They have announced that they are looking to take a bigger piece of the gaming pie in 2009 and hope to expand in order to do so.
The managing director of the Atari Atlantic region, Alberto Gonzalez Lorca, feels that the UK market is one that Atari needs to focus its energy in 2009. “We must now get out to retail and explain in further detail our plans for this new range of titles, plus there will be more added for later in the year,” he said.
“This is a very exciting time for Atari and the UK, of course, is hugely important to us. There is some rebuilding to be done, but we are already putting our team together and great progress has been made in assembling a quality range of titles.”
That’s all great, but there’s no need to leave the defenceless PSP out in the December snow, is there?
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