Sony has been talking in depth at its San Diego Gamers Day this week, and Lazard Capital Markets' Colin Sebastian has put some of the key announcements in perspective as part of his NPD game sales preview for April.
Sebastian noted in his commentary: "This week, we attended Sony’s Gamers Day in San Diego, where the company provided details on several titles in development for the PS3 and PSP as well as an update on the PlayStation Network (PSN)."
"Sony expects 90 third-party PS3 titles to launch this year, along with 15 exclusive first- and third-party titles. We note that several titles generated interest at the event, including
Heavenly Sword, Little Big Planet, SOCOM, and [the newly announced]
Pain."
In addition the analyst has extracted specific data on the company's PlayStation Network digital download efforts for the PlayStation 3, revealing: "Sony indicated that there are now 1.5M users of PSN including 775k users in North America, and more than 6 million content downloads to-date."
He went on: "We believe a successful online gaming effort increases the shelf life of video game software, provides an additional revenue stream for publishers, and broadens the overall usability of consoles. In addition, Sony’s online community “Home” is in beta and expected to launch in fall 2007."
Finally, there was news on Sony's handheld gaming device: "The company also indicated that 140 titles would launch on the PSP, while a video download service and hardware refresh are expected later this year." No further specifics on this 'hardware refresh', presumably an incremental PSP upgrade, have yet been officially released by the company.
