People may think that Sony has given up on the PSP, but there are still many reasons to believe 2007 will be a great year for the groundbreaking handheld. Price drops, new video download services, Gran Turismo Mobile, Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops, and Animal Crossing are just a few of the reasons why this could be a breakout year for a system that is 2 years old and is losing support from its manufacturer.

Sony has already found that their PS3 is not going to be what they expected. They are losing money on every sale of the system, and Nintendo is stealing their thunder with some of the most creative games of the past decade. Sony may find that better profits can be made by refocusing on the PSP and the fact that it can interact with the PS3 in many ways. Nintendo has had trouble getting consumers to use their handhelds with their full-size consoles, but their recent handhelds have also sucked. The PSP has the bigger screen and slick resolution that games want in a handheld. It’s really the only handheld I’ve ever played that actually makes games look like their larger counterparts. That’s mainly due to the fact that the resolution can be scaled down without anyone noticing because the screen is only a few inches.

With comparable graphics, I think we may see more PSP games tied-in with their PS3 counterparts. Customers will have to buy both games in order to complete the full story. This works especially well with story-based franchises like Metal Gear Solid and Final Fantasy, but it can also be successful with games that have no story buy character-building elements, such as Gran Turismo (yes, I realize you aren’t really a named character in the game, but you do build up a garage full of nice cars and have to keep racing to get money to buy better cars). Imagine cars in Gran Turismo Online that can only be unlocked by winning races in Gran Turismo Mobile. The customer will have to spend nearly $100 to buy both games, and the margins on each sale are huge. That’s the kind of business model Sony should be focusing on right now.

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