Sony Computer Entertainment hopes to boost PSP sales. Analysts are expecting a package of new PSP online services to be revealed in the middle of March of this year. Also, analysts are expecting a tie-up with a major ISP like Yahoo!.

Nobuyuki Oneda, Sony's chief financial officer, told the Financial Times that the games division has to get its act together if it wants to meet the goals set by Sir Howard Stringer. If you'll remember, Stringer is Sony Corporation of America's Chairman and CEO, and he said that Sony plans to have a profit margin of 5% by the end of this fiscal year. This means the PS3 has to break even by the end of the year and the PSP has to start making lots of money.

Analysts think Sony's action plan is this:

To promote the PSP as a more user-friendly device capable of downloading films, television shows, and back-catalogue PlayStation and PlayStation 2 games. The changes could allow users to download games and other content anywhere the PSP can be connected to a WiFi network.

Now you see why Sony might tie up with a company like Yahoo!. Sony needs to get more mainstream users interested in buying PSPs and downloading games and other content.

However, the source did not say how much PSP owners will have to pay in order to have access to the new online services (i.e., will the new online services they'll reveal in March be free?). As homebrew fans, that's one thing we really want to hear more about because PSP homebrew already gives us content at a low price (i.e., fun for free, PSP tools and apps for free), so Sony's downloadable content will have to be high-quality content at reasonably low prices.

 

Finally, we'd like to add that we think the "Find Me" TV spots (also at Sony's official site) are a good step in getting mainstream non-hardcore-gamers interested in the PSP.