PSP: Make way for the Minis

Tremblay himself joins the assembled ranks of game-makers in paying tribute to Sony's new developer-friendly approach. "Reducing the price is one thing - money is always an object," he says. "I think opening these dev-kits and this distribution platform to indie developers is a great opportunity for us to take our material, take our ideas, take our content, and throw it out there to a pre-existing, massive userbase... It's Minis, but with a massive support group by Sony."

Rounding off the presentation is a brace of EA Mobile games showcased by studio head Chris Gibbs. Demonstrating that the Minis programme is available to all developers and publishers both large and small, Gibbs says that EA Mobile is currently the market leader in terms of portable gaming, and reveals that its initial line-up of PSP Minis consists of two old favourites. The first up is a new iteration of Sudoku, featuring over 200 puzzles "ranging from easy all the way through to insane". A new "newspaper" game mode has been introduced that allows you to copy over puzzles from the printed page and store them in memory on the PSP, the idea being that you can complete these puzzles at your own leisure, whenever and wherever you want.

EA's second offering is a new iteration of the game that took handheld gaming into the mainstream all the way back in 1990 - Tetris. Despite the somewhat ancient origins of the game, Gibbs claims that "there's a lot of innovation in this - within EA Mobile we've done a heck of a lot with Tetris over the years," and cites the classic and marathon modes plus a new replay option that allows you to relive your greatest Tetris combos.

With no actual gameplay on show for either title, and little in the way of originality mooted, it has to be said that EA's offerings suggest the company is playing it safe. Gibbs himself reckons these titles were chosen as "truly mass-market games" and says that a further four games are in development for the Minis line. He won't go into any specifics whatsoever on what they are though. I ask about original IP, but get little in the way of feedback. Gibbs invites me check out other titles in the EA Mobile range for an overall idea of what the division's overall ethos is, but the originality question seemingly remains unanswered.

In closing the presentation, SCEE's Zeno Colaço makes it clear that it was the developers and publishers of the games that were the stars of this Minis presentation. And it may well be that this is the reason Sony itself - which has the largest set of first-party development studios out of all the three major platform holders - isn't presenting any Minis on the day. While the programme is still young and embryonic in many ways, Colaço assures me that Sony's game-makers are contributing to the Minis line-up, but there is the very real sense that the primary focus of his efforts is on bringing in brand new talent to the PSP platform.

Not only that, but Sony also seems set on carefully stage-managing the show - compare and contrast with the App Store, either impenetrably chaotic or overflowing with new content, depending on how you view it. The Minis programme is set to launch jointly on 1st October with PSPgo, offering 15 titles, and there are 50 currently in development. It seems clear that Sony wants to pace the release of the games, and give them a chance to breathe: music to the ears of iPhone developers worried about the exposure and success their games get on to the iTunes App Store.

In many ways, the Minis project has more in common with Microsoft's Xbox Live Arcade set-up than the Apple set-up. Colaço is quick to point out that the focus is very definitely on games here, as that is where Sony's strengths traditionally are. So those looking for legitimate alternatives to the tools and apps currently only available via PSP custom firmware are being given little motive to turn back from the dark side.

Overall though, Sony's ethos seems sound and laudable, and the notion of bringing keenly priced, creatively-driven mobile games to the PSP is obviously a no-brainer, and long overdue. Just how successful Sony has been in its efforts will only become apparent once the full range of games has been released. We'll be checking them out when they are.