What Are They
PSP Minis are a new range of downloadable, small-sized, games that will be sold through the PlayStation Store. As Sony’s puts it they are “fun, affordable, creative, easy to play and different”.

This range of games are obviously inspired by the Apple app store games, which tend to be lower budget and lower priced then traditional games. Clearly Sony wants a piece of the surprisingly large pie Apple are enjoying where consumers have access to quality, but low cost, games that are easy to store and quick to download and play.

Launch Date
October 1^st is when you can expect to see the PSP Minis in a new and dedicated section of the PlayStation Store. Sony indicates there will be 15 launch titles and 50 games in total, by the end of the year.

50 games for the last quarter is exciting. That’s 200 games a year if they keep up the pace. Depending on sales, and overall success, we could see a lot more as more big and small developers jump on board.

Price
There has been a lot of talk regarding price with everyone agreeing they will come in under $10. Pocket Gamers unnamed source has set the price range to 1, 2 and 5 Euros (USD$1.50-$7).  In a talk to IndianVideoGamer GameShastra CEO Prakash Ahujac confirmed this pricing stating they have 30 PSP Minis in the works, which will all be priced between $1.50 and $2.50.

Whether this is the official price range of PSP Minis or just the price point GameShastra are aiming for is unknown.

Size
Currently they are restricted to 100MBs in size. A lot can be packed into that amount of data so this still gives developers a lot of freedom to provide a quality experience. Remember, Xbox live arcade games were originally limited to 50MB and yet we received some awesome games (Alien Hominid, N+).

Keep in mind, Microsoft do make exceptions and they eventually raised the bar, first to 150MB and then to 350MB. The fact is Microsoft listened to its partners, and consumers, and there is no reason why Sony can’t do the same if 100MBs prove to be too limiting.

Games
The list of announced games is getting larger every day. Have a look at the updated definitive list of upcoming PSP Minis here.

Exclusive Titles
There will be exclusive titles launched in the Minis range. This was confirmed by Eric Lempel, Director of PlayStation Network, saying “minis will give developers the opportunity to create and share a variety of new and original content that in some cases, are only available on PSP.”

Judging from some of the high quality PS3 exclusives this is obviously a good strategy by Sony to sell more hardware. I know I bought my PS3 because I could stand being left out on Little Big Planet and Killzone 2 any longer. How this strategy translates to cheaper mini games is yet to be seen.

Multiplayer
The will be no wireless mulitiplayer for the first stage of Minis. So the only way you will be playing with a friend will be via “‘hot seat” mulitplayer. For games that could have had an excellent multiplayer component this is a big let down.

I guess it means for the first wave of Minis we will be seeing games that were designed first and foremost for an excellent single player experience.

Sony have stated that multiplayer is an option in the future. It seem likely that this is something they will have to implement in order to compete in the App Store like game market. The question how long will it take to open this option to developers.

Downloadable Content
Again no. Sony is trying to speed up there QA (Quality Assurance) process so they can approve  minis as quickly as possible. The way they have decided to do this is by limiting features like downloadable content and software updates.

Patches/Updates
Sony has confirmed that PSP Minis will be patchable.

Free Demo’s
No word on this yet. Time will tell. The lower the price range, the less I feel this is necessary. If I buy a $1.50 game that ends up being rubbish, I’m not going to sweat it. Still, I don’t like supporting developers who don’t deserve it. That’s like rewarding bad behaviour. In any case it’s always nice to try before you buy, so demo’s would be nice.

So as you can see there are still a lot of unknowns about the PSP Minis. Hopefully, most will be revealed leading up to the launch. I will be updating this page as new information becomes available, so stay tuned.

In the meantime let us know your thoughts on price, size, patches and demo’s in the comments below.