As part of their initiative to entice developers for their PSP Minis service (and probably to remind gamers that they haven't forgotten about UMD yet), Sony has hinted at the prospect of Minis eventually being released on the PSP's proprietary UMD format. Not only that, thse bite-sized games could also end up making the jump to the PS3.

Sony's strategy for the PSP Go -- and to a certain extent, for older PSPs -- seems to target Apple's App Store directly. In the eyes of Sony Europe's head of developer relations, Zeno Colaco, they're not directly gunning for the App Store at all, but they will be doing things better by giving more support and visibility to developers.

Giving the PSP direct access to the PlayStation Store may not kill the UMD disc, according to Sony, but it's certainly going to change the way games are distributed. With digital distribution, Sony hopes to ignite a new breed of games to be released on the handheld.

With the launch of the PlayStation Store on the PSP, Sony's established a milestone in their ongoing journey through the realm of content downloading from the PS3 Store to the PC Store and now, the PSP Store. Will the previous rumor of seeing all PSP games in 2009 as downloads eventually prove true? If that were the case, then some of you might be worried (for the nth time now) about the UMD format's future. A Sony executive responded to this concern, keeping optimism for the UMD alive.

It looks like the PSP has at least seven more years in its lifespan. At least that's what Sony is hoping for according to SCEE's Zeno Colaco. In an interview with Pocket gamer, Colaco revealed that Sony's long-term plans for the PSP includes a ten-year console lifespan. More in the full article.

There's so much speculation right now on how Sony will handle the connectivity between PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Portable. The recent interview with Sony Computer Entertainment Europe (SCEE) VP of Publisher and Developer Relations Zeno Colaco sheds a lot of light regarding the matter.

To begin with, Colaco said that the PSP is actually doing good but people tend to compare its performance with the success of the PSOne and PS2. The vice president commented that people always forget that they were new to the handheld space. Concerning main competitor Nintendo DS, Colaco admitted that the PSP was somehow behind it,

Nintendo can take a lot of credit for launching a different type of product for a slightly different consumer and it's done exceptionally well. I think some of the DS games have been fantastic. Where in hindsight we've been short is one or two killer apps that would have been able to drive PSP forward.

Despite that, the official still believes that the business model being employed by Sony with the PSP remains very strong. That said model is actually 20:80 meaning 80% of business will come from the games of the third party developers and publishers. The remaining 20%, needless to say, will come from Sony itself.

When asked about the handheld's future, Zeno Colaco mentioned that the technology behind the PSP is still top-end so that doesn't need to be addressed. The future, the official added, belongs to what the PSP can do in conjunction with the PS3 and the PlayStation Network,

I think the downloadable element of PSP will be a key factor as we move into 2008; connectibility with PlayStation 3 is a key factor. We've soft pedalled this to date, because we had to concentrate on PlayStation 3, but the PlayStation Network isn't just about PS3 going forward.