Sony: PSP was "under-supported," UMD wasn't brilliant, more snack-type games

Ray Maguire, Sony UK's senior VP and MD, admitted to a couple of things during a recent interview, like how Sony's been letting the PSP slip last year, and how they're confident that it's really going to pick up this year. Sounds like a speech in an AA meeting.

Anyway, of the more interesting things he admitted was that the PSP was "slightly under-supported" in the past year, "mainly because a lot of the energy was going into stuff we're doing for PlayStation 3." He also mentioned how the UMD contributed to this too, saying it "wasn't brilliant for third parties, either."

However, he does say that things are looking bright for this year:

I think we had a bit of a barren year last year, and this year we seem to have a bumper crop. [...] We do have that confidence this year - many things are happening with the PSP.

The online side of it is developing nicely, and there are clearly lots of great games for it this year, but also we're introducing new colours - so it starts to become much more desirable for a wider range of consumers. This year is the year that PSP puts its head up proudly.

You know what, no one in the games industry has really been a serious contender in this market place, whether it be the GameGear, the Atari Lynx, or Gizmondo... but 50 million later the PSP is pretty strong.

His enthusiasm is apparent of Sony's overall plan for the PSP, which we've been hearing a lot about the past few months. Another interesting bit he said during the interview was that:

My gut feeling though is that people are looking for more snack-type content, and the downloads side of it will increasingly become a bigger part of its future. It's also something that development can get into at a much, much lower entry cost, and I think we can see this everywhere, [...] there is an appetite for smaller, snack-type games.

It certainly doesn't point outright to an incoming UMD-less PSP model, as David Perry keeps insisting, but it does sound like more PSN downloads is part of Sony's plan to reinvigorate the PSP.