Sony Expects Lots Of Holiday Cheer for PSP

Investor's Business Daily writes that Sony is gearing up for a big holiday season push for the PSP with a major advertising and marketing campaign planned to support the product in the U.S.. Of course one of the key issues for the device is a dearth of new content, which Sony promises to rectify in the upcoming months.

Sony is banking on three big titles to be launched in the next two months that will hopefully drive sales of the devic - Electronic Arts' Madden NFL 2006, Take-Two Interactive's Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories and Sony's Socom: U.S. Navy Seals: Fireteam Bravo.

According to David Cole at DFC Intelligence, the PSP's price of $249 and myriad functionality appeal to an older audience and he believes the portable gaming market is poised to heat up with more third-party software publishers releasing content as the installed base grows. "Content is just starting to ramp up," Cole said. DFC predicts the portable game software sales to rise to $2.7 billion in North America in 2007, up from $1.2 billion in 2004.

I can't wait since my son's PSP has been languishing on his shelf due to the lack of compelling games. Obviously GTA is out and he's not a sports fan. Burnout Legends looks promising but doesn't offer Internet play, so maybe some of the upcoming licensed titles like Star Wars Battlefront II, Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter will do. Socom and The Sims 2 looks promising too so time to start saving up and figuring out which games to get. It'll be a nice change after waiting for so long...