Sony Europe's head of developer relations, Zeno Colaco, has said that the platform holder could consider making PSP development kits freely available in the future.
Speaking in an interview about the company’s upcoming range of bite-sized PSP titles, dubbed PSP Minis, Colaco said that Sony is working hard to attract developers to the handheld in order to ensure there’s a healthy library of games for the upcoming service, but noted that totally opening up the platform could have drawbacks too.
“Further down the line, we may investigate a totally free model or supported model,” he told Develop.
“Right now, we’re looking for a good portfolio of games. Unlike with the App Store, we’re looking to support everyone that develops for us, instead of leaving developers out in the wilderness. We’re not immediately interested in giving developers free access and no help.”
Sony recently reduced the price of PSP dev tool models DTP-T2000A and DTP-T2000 to 150,000 yen, $1,500 and €1,200. An iPhone SDK is free to download but developers have to pay a $99 fee to enrol in the iPhone developer program.
“There are dangers in having total open access; having six thousand applications where probably only thirty are discovered by the consumer,” said Colaco. “Some of the developers working on the App Store and PSP Minis tell us that they prefer our approach because they get more visibility."
The PSP Minis service is due to launch with around 15 titles on October 1. 50 games are expected to be made available before the end of the year.