Sony is considering offering its PSP development kits for free at some point in the future.
Having already cut the price of its kits by a whopping 80 per cent in recent months, you might think that Sony would be content to sit back and rake in the orders in preparation for its forthcoming Minis service. But it appears it's not finished with luring developers over from the iPhone.
Apple's development kit, of course, is free, and in a recent interview with
Develop Sony Europe's Zeno Colaco claimed that Sony might well follow suit.
"Further down the line, we may investigate a totally free model or supported model," he said.
For now, though, Colaco sounds a cautionary tale on the results of such free access to a platform:
"There are dangers in having total open access; having six thousand applications where probably only thirty are discovered by the consumer," he claims. "Some of the developers working on the App Store and PSP Minis tell us that they prefer our approach because they get more visibility."
James Hall | 9 September 2009
I hope they dont, I would hate to see a load of sh*te appear on the PSN Store that you have to wade through.
Jose | 14 September 2009
Well of course they 'get more visibility', PSP minis is still pretty much a closed platform with a limited number of exclusively chosen developers. If you don't currently have any well selling iPhone games and/or good experience in the games industry, Sony doesn't even bother looking at you.
All it has done is make it easier for independent game development companies to enter the PSP development scene, but it still prevents the average person from jumping in and making games for a platform that has a lot of potential.
I guess I'll stick to the iPhone SDK until Sony actually does choose to open up development for the PSP properly.
