http://www.1up.com/article2/0,2053,1554440,00.asp

GDC: Sony Shows First PSP Game
By David Smith
3/25/2004

Sony Computer Entertainment America's presentations, like the one
delivered by executive vice president Andrew House at the Game
Developers Conference earlier today, tend to be more than a little
optimistic. But Sony has a lot to be optimistic about -- a massive
lead in the console arena, and upcoming hardware with almost universal
popular support behind it. Support for the PSP was the most notable
sentiment on display during House's presentation, as several
developers expressed their enthusiasm for Sony's new handheld.

Worldwide, House claimed some 81 developers are at work on PSP games:
23 in North America, 24 in Japan, and 34 in Europe. His presentation
featured expressions of support from several developer representatives
-- Electronic Arts, Vicarious Visions, and even long-time Nintendo
partisan Julian Eggebrecht of Factor 5 had encouraging words to add.

A North American company delivered the most notable contribution to
the presentation. Backbone Entertainment, represented by former
Digital Eclipse producer Chris Charla, showed off a video of its first
PSP project, an action-platformer called Death, Jr. that will be
exclusive to the system.

If the name inspires visions in your head of a superdeformed Grim
Reaper (something like the Blind Skateboards mascot), you wouldn't be
very far off the mark. The trailer featured graphics roughly
comparable to PS2 games and a action-oriented style reminiscent of
Spyro the Dragon or Maximo.

Though his enthusiasm wasn't so surprising, considering this was
Sony's presentation, Charla had plenty of positive things to say about
developing for the PSP. *****"Polygon for polygon," he claimed, "PSP
has more power than PS2," and it's apparently easier to develop for as
well. "A huge number of effects that are given to you in software on
PS2 are available in hardware on PSP."*****

Charla compared the ease of development to experience with the
GameCube, saying that Backbone had its first PSP game up and running
within two man-weeks, and a PS2 project ported over to the PSP within
four.

House had some fairly bold predictions about the PSP's potential sales
success. "The trajectory of sales could be even bigger than PS2," he
said. Citing the speedy growth of the mobile handset market, House
predicted that the PSP is arriving at the optimal time for a product
of this kind.

He also spoke in a little more detail about one of the PSP's more
interesting technical capabilities. The handheld's support for 802.11b
wireless LAN will obviously replace the physical link cables of past
handhelds, but House also claimed the PSP will connect with other
hardware. As rumored earlier, connectivity with the PlayStation 2 is
in the works, and the PSP will also be able to connect with PCs,
possibly to move digital media like music and movies back and forth
between the two.

The PS2 wasn't entirely forgotten during Sony's presentation, although
it focused less on mainstream games and more on the potential of the
new EyeToy peripheral. House displayed the new EyeToy face-mapping
feature in 989 Studios' latest baseball game, and also demonstrated a
new, as-yet-untitled project. This demo allowed a player standing in
front of the EyeToy to control a character sliding down a rail, like
the rail-slide levels in the recent Sonic Heroes. The camera detected
the player's movements to let the character lean back and forth, and a
pair of sensor wristbands let the player control the character's arms,
which moved up and down to catch passing items.

Sony also enlisted the aid of "American Idol" anti-hero William Hung
to demo EyeToy: Groove, but the less said about that event, the
better.

Neither Sony nor its rivals have spent much of their time at GDC
directly addressing the competition between them, but all of their
recent announcements have made the three-way race between Sony,
Nintendo, and Microsoft more and more interesting. We'll have more
news on all their future plans from GDC in the coming days.