PSP Minis already winning over iPhone devs

Sony is seeing the beginnings of what it hopes is a vast migration of iPhone developers to PSPgo projects

During its Gamescom press conference, Sony revealed that its new Minis range – PSPgo games, sized under 100MB, sold cheap – has already courted enough small developers to create about 50 Mini-games by the end of the year.

One of those developers was revealed to be HoneySlug, a three-man studio based in London. HoneySlug has already created two games for the iPhone – Ric Rococo and Balloon Headed Boy – but the team is now focusing its efforts on Sony’s new disc-less handheld.

Further accelerating Sony’s push into a market that has downloaded over 1 billion iPhone Apps, the firm is partnering with Canadian studio Frima to develop Zombie Tycoon; “a thinking man’s zombie game”.

Frima had previously made two iPhone titles – GalaXseeds Tuber Shooter and iBrain Fit-IQ – but the group is, at least for now, putting down its iPhone SDK.

Part of the appeal in developing Minis as opposed to iPhone Apps may indeed be the popularity of the latter.

The App store is now flooded with cheap games, and many developers are struggling to stand out from the crowd. However many Mini-games the PSPgo has by the end of twelve months may indeed be symptomatic of this saturation point.