For all the disparaging remarks Westerners make about the PSP, it is a successful platform. Sony has sold 50 million worldwide. That's nothing to sneeze at!
Still, Sony Computer Entertainment's Ray Maguire does concede that support for that platform hasn't been quite up to snuff in the past. I"t was slightly under-supported, mainly because a lot of the energy was going into stuff we're doing for PLAYSTATION 3," Maguire. "There was an added complication in that the UMD model wasn't brilliant for third parties, either."
While they might not have been brilliant for third parties, Maguire states that UMD continues to represent "a reasonably cost-effective way of getting data to the consumer." Though, he adds that there are downloads in the PSP's future.
"My gut feeling though is that people are looking for more snack-type content," Maguire says, "and the downloads side of it will increasingly become a bigger part of its future." Wonder if that future holds a UMD-drive-free PSP...
Ray Maguire Interview [GamesIndustry]