Back in May, SCEA president Jack Tretton expressed hope that the PSP-based service for downloadable games, demos, and video would arrive this year. "I think the advent of a long awaited and quite frankly long overdue ability to deliver a downloadable service for the PSP will help us out a great deal," he admitted at SCEA's Gamers Day Event. "Hopefully we'll have it out there by the fall."

Koller attributes the holdup to issues stemming from the always-pesky digital rights management, which he estimates may take between six and eight months to resolve. However, he did confirm that a number of original downloadable PSP games are currently in development, promising that "the PSP ones are equally as good [as current PlayStation 3 downloadable titles] and made for a portable."

One such example of a title originally planned for PSP's online store is SCE Japan Studio's echochrome, based on Jun Fujiki's PC freeware OLE Coordinate System. "It was initially going to be a download-service-only game," Koller said of the title, which will also be made available for PlayStation 3 via the console's online PlayStation Store. "We changed it to a UMD because it's a very rich game. That's where their mind is. They're developing that kind of game."

Koller noted all future first-party PSP titles will make full use of the system's recently unlocked CPU. The hardware manufacturer also hopes to provide certain elements of SCE London Studio's PlayStation 3 social networking world Home on the PSP and may possibly design a PS3 game that could be played from either the console itself or via the PSP's Remote Play functionality.