Patapon Pata-Price: $19.99

I’m fortunate enough to see a lot of PlayStation games at various stages of development. From back-of-the-napkin to playable code, one of the things my team and I are tasked with is to provide feedback to the development teams making the games. We look at the core gameplay (is it fun??!), the competitive landscape (will it sell), and target audience (tweens vs adults, male vs female, hardcore vs casual, etc) to evaluate if we should ultimately publish a title for our market. It is a challenging process, but very rewarding when that title comes to life and the forums light up.

We are always looking for something “unique” and “innovative,” since that makes our jobs as marketers that much easier, and ideally, fans happier when they are playing something new. However, “innovation” is a double-edged sword; the gaming landscape is littered with cult-favorites that buck the trends and try a completely different approach, but have trouble finding a broad audience. A perfect example is our quirky, tilt-a-world PSP game, LocoRoco.

So the reason for my post. Hopefully you have heard that we will be releasing a great new PSP title called Patapon here to the US in February. It’s a completely original PSP game on several levels, offering a fusion of action and rhythm gaming with an eye-catching 2D art style. It’s becoming a hit in Japan – and by looking at the early previews from the press, I know you all will dig it too.

As you can see, Patapon is really different and highly creative, a new kind of PSP experience we don’t want anyone to miss. So to make it more accessible to everyone, we are happy to officially announce that we are releasing it at $19.99, lower than other new PSP games. It’s a game that shouldn’t get lost with some other big titles launching on the platform. It deserves your attention because it’s very cool.

Normally, this price had been reserved for our Greatest Hits line, a collection of well established titles. But we felt that the unique nature of Patapon fit nicely into this pricepoint, and would work to attract the masses (casual, younger) who may otherwise miss it. So we’ll see if it works!

So please show your support for innovation and quirkiness by giving Patapon a try when we release it on February 26th – you’ll see what a great game it is and I’ll bet you won’t be able to get their song out of your head!

Thanks for reading!