24 American PSP launch titles named

Having finally revealed pricing and launch information for the PlayStation Portable in North America ($249.99, 24th March, with a free UMD movie of Spider-Man 2 for the first million - in case you missed yesterday's excitement), Sony has also now taken the wraps off the list of 24 titles to be made available in the North American launch "timeframe". We don't expect them all to be available on day one, but they will all be available shortly after the US launch.

Boasting of "a launch library more than triple that of our closest competitor," Sony went on to report that it has "an additional 23 titles currently in development" at various first and third parties, and that PSP software titles would "range from as low as $39.99".

It's an impressive list, certainly, covering a multitude of genres - mini-games, fighting, strategy (both turn-based and real-time), puzzling, every conceivable American sport (and football), action, hackandslash, racing from the arcade and futuristic stables and even an RPG of sorts - and it doesn't even include some of Sony's European-made and backed titles like WRC, MediEvil, Colin McRae and TOCA 2, nor SCEJ's Everybody's Golf, or Hot Shots Golf as it'll be known in the US.

Sony has yet to announce details of its European launch plans, but a spokesperson yesterday told us that an announcement was imminent. Amusingly, we were actually locked in a boardroom with the European first party PSP line-up when SCEA released its launch plans yesterday afternoon. But more on that another time.

For now, here's the list Sony's cobbled together of titles due out for the PSP in its US launch window:

• Ape Escape: On the Loose (SCEA)
• ATV Offroad Fury: Blazin' Trails (SCEA)
• Darkstalkers Chronicle: The Chaos Tower (Capcom)
• Dynasty Warriors (KOEI)
• FIFA Football 2005 (EA)
• Gretzky NHL (SCEA)
• Lumines (Ubisoft)
• Metal Gear Acid (Konami)
• MLB (SCEA)
• MVP Baseball (EA)
• NBA (SCEA)
• NBA Street Showdown (EA)
• Need for Speed Rivals (EA)
• NFL Street 2 Unleashed (EA)
• Rengoku: Tower of Purgatory (Konami)
• Ridge Racer (Namco)
• Smartbomb (Eidos)
• Spider-Man 2 (Activision)
• Tiger Woods PGA Tour (EA)
• Tony Hawk's Underground 2 Remix (Activision)
• Twisted Metal: Head On (SCEA)
• Untold Legends: Brotherhood of the Blade (SOE)
• Wipeout Pure (SCEA)
• World Tour Soccer (SCEA)

For more details on many of these titles, feel free to consult our three-part PSP Games To Watch in 2005 feature from last month. Part one, part two, part three.