New PSP Engine for Devs

The PSP has long been known as a system that needs more quality games, and Sony is continuing to support development on the handheld with the release of the PhyreEngine to studios this spring.

The PhyreEngine is a free graphics rendering engine, versions of which have been used for PS3 development as well as PSN titles such as Flower (shown).

"We're very happy to see the continued popularity of PhyreEngine with the global game development community," said Teiji Yutaka, senior vice president, technology platform of SCEI. "PhyreEngine for PSP was developed in response to requests from the game developer community, and we hope that the release of the PSP version demonstrates our commitment and support for game developers on all our platforms."

It's great to see Sony keep plugging away on the PSP despite the general feeling that your average gamer has given up on the system – after all, the PSP can't get better if Sony just lets it die. While the PhyreEngine is no second analog stick, it still has to be better for the unit than the PSP Go, for instance.