Ubisoft: 'Sony's PSP is in no man's land'

Ubisoft has called on Sony to bring some direction to its Portable PlayStation device in a bid to prevent publishers from abandoning the format.

UK managing director Rob Cooper said he believes the system is over-priced, too technical and that Sony's strategy with the games system is currently in 'no man's land'.

"I think that Sony is disappointed with sales and it's unsure as to which way to take it," Cooper told GamesIndustry.

"Sony needs to show us a bit more about what its plans are to convince the publisher to invest lots more money into it. Especially when you've got the DS selling at such a tremendous pace.

"I suppose it's almost too technical for the casual person, those that are buying the DS at the moment, who want a few buttons and not a lot more. It's so simple what [Nintendo] has done. That's where I think Sony has gone a little bit too complicated, they've over-specced it, the price is too high and they need to go back to the drawing board and start again."

Discussing Sony's strategy with the PSP, Cooper said: "At the moment they are in no man's land, they're not sure quite how to tackle the DS competition and who is the PSP consumer. They've got to sort that out first."

The Ubisoft boss, who added he believes the PSP to be an "absolutely beautiful" product, said that cutting the price of games won't entice buyers: "As a publisher I'll always say pricing is not the first point of call. I don't think dropping the price of games is going to sell more product or hardware."