Sony has announced a range of nine games which will be available at or around the European launch of Sony's PlayStation Portable, taking the opportunity to re-iterate some already-known PSP titles, as well as reveal some previously unannounced, European-developed PSP games, showing the range of worldwide Sony internal development going into the important launch period.
The games described include
Ape Academy, a minigame-centric spinoff of the
Ape Escape franchise;
Everybody's Golf, here known as
Hot Shots Golf;
MediEvil, a return to the action platformer franchise by SCEE Studio Cambridge;
Ridge Racers, not yet precisely dated, but definitely coming to Europe;
Wip3out Pure, a futuristic 8-player racer which continues Sony's franchise;
World Rally Championship, an FIA World Rally Championship game from Travellers Tales; as well as the Sony London-developed vehicle combat game
Fired Up, the soccer title
Football, and an officially licensed
Formula One title.
All nine games will be released either simultaneously with the system or within the "launch window," which likely means sometime during March 2005 or a little later.
While the slate of nine games is smaller than the 21 due for the PSP's launch window in Japan this month, this list, other than
Ridge Racers, is limited simply to SCEE's first-party games. Thus, with the addition of third-party games, the list can be expected to grow to reach a respectable total for European launch. The U.S. lineup hasn't been revealed yet, but American players can likely expect to see a selection from both the Japanese and European launch games when the system does hit American retailers early next year.
