SOE eying PSP MMOGs

From its inception, the PlayStation Portable has been positioned as a multimedia device with nongaming functionality. But, thanks largely to a pair of hardware revisions in the last 18 months, the device has quickly become Sony's Swiss Army knife in the gaming space. Slimmer, lighter, and packing a stronger battery, the PSP-2000 and its en route PSP-3000 upgrade grant portable gamers a bevy of online connectivity options. Not the least of these are Internet phone support, messenger services, and, only in Japan for now, the ability to interface with the PlayStation Store without need of a PS3 or PC go-between.

So what else is on the horizon for the PSP? Massively multiplayer gaming, if Sony Online Entertainment president John Smedley has his way. Speaking to MTV's Multiplayer gaming blog, the Sony executive said that his massively multiplayer online gaming label has been eying the portable ever since SOE was made into a division of Sony Computer Entertainment, as was announced in March.

"And as we've kind of got our heads up looking around the world within Sony Computer Entertainment, we're really starting to see a big push for PSP," commented Smedley. "We think it's a world-class device...In the future, we see full MMOs that are designed for the PSP."

Smedley offered an example of how an MMOG might work on the PSP using SOE's free-to-play online game Free Realms, which is slated to arrive on the PlayStation 3 and PC.

"In Free Realms, you could have a pet-training system that literally connects to our online gaming where you can mess around with your pet...Another way to do it might be to give them mini-games that they can do [on the PSP] when sitting at a bus stop. You're sitting there leveling up your character, you log in at home when you're on Wi-Fi, and all of the sudden your character has leveled up. We think those kinds of experiences are very possible."

SOE isn't the only MMOG company eyeing the PlayStation Portable. As part of its collaboration announcement at the 2007 E3 Media & Business Summit, NCsoft said that it had entered into a partnership with Sony to create online games for both the PS3 and PSP. Shedding more light on the deal in August, then-NCsoft North America CEO Robert Garriott backed off that original announcement, however, saying that the company's focus was on the PS3, but PSP development was a possibility.