• Tweet

Some of the independent developers who have had success with the iPhone App Sore have said that they arn’t sure the the PSPgo can compete with Apple and that Sony won’t be able to attract enough indie developers to its platform.

Sony announced the PSPgo App Store a while back, they also announced that some of the popular iPhone developers such as Subatomic Studios were on board. Also that the cost of the development
kits have been cut by a massive 80% in order to entice smaller developers.

Despite these cost cuts Firemint CEO Robert Murray says that this might be enough, the PSP development kits still costs $1,500 USD. Compared to Apple who only charge a $99 USD publising fee.
Murray says that this will make the iPhone a much more attractive platform to small studios.

"You can build iPhone apps just as long as you have a Mac for no additional cost. You don’t even need an iPhone or iPod to start out – I think this has given a lot of individuals absolutely
no barrier of entry to development," agreed developers from Johnny Two Shoes (The Heist) in an interview with GI.biz.

"The cost is also a factor for development time, you don’t need months or years to build great iPhone applications," he added.

The worries were echoed by Normalware’s (BeBot) Russell Black, who said he wasn’t sure that the PSPgo was going to take off as well as Sony expected and that, since the platform has zero owners at the moment, he’d be reluctant to take the plunge until the platform had grown.

"If Sony’s App Store also let you sell games to people with a regular, existing PSP model, that would be a much more attractive prospect," he said.

"There are nearly 50 million of those out there already. Even if you only sold to a fraction of one percent of those people, it’s a significant number of sales. And even if the PSPgo sells great from day one, it’s going to take a long time before it starts getting anywhere near those numbers."

Via bit-tech.

Related posts:

1. New PS3 motion control details
2. iTunes App Store gets 1.5bn downloads in a year
3. New PSP to be released
4. Are Apple preparing iPhone Nano?
5. Over 1 Million 3G iPhones sold