In an interview with Sony PlayStation Portable senior production manager John Koller, Wired Blog's Chris Kholer chatted about the future of the PSP now that the price of the Core unit has been slashed by $30 USD in North America. Somewhat surprisingly, Koller explained that the Japanese electronics giant plans to aggressively target the 13-17 year-old demographic with a campaign entitled, "Dude, Get Your Own."

"Most of our registered owners database stats have shown the 13-17 year-old consumers far outpacing other groups in terms of purchase," commented Koller. "The intend-to-purchase crowd is living mostly in that group as well. We're looking to expand beyond where we've been. PSP started as a device to appeal to 18-34 year-olds, but north of 26-27."

The Sony employee cited a number of reasons for the recent decision to cut the price of its handheld machine. Firstly, the company was keen to pass savings attributed to the manufacturing cost of the PSP back to its customers; secondly it they hoped to repeat the success that a $30 USD price reduction caused last year (110,000 PSPs were sold over five days in participating Wal-Mart stores); and lastly because of the new focus on a younger audience.

Koller also remained adamant that Sony was still keen to throw its weight behind the dwindling UMD format (used to play movies on the handheld), again referencing the younger market as a reason to keep the faith: "What we're seeing from studios is that they are establishing what that content needs to be, primarily action and comedy. They're calibrating that towards what the consumer is," he said.

Despite a dwindling list of software releases in North America, Koller was also quick to stress that Sony is committed to creating unique experiences for its portable. "We really want to be able to identify ways to set the software apart from console software. Consumers don't want a mobile version of a game they can play at home," oulined Koller. "God of War on PSP will be entirely different than anything you can play on consoles," he added.

With the Nintendo DS still outperforming the PSP in every major region, Sony has a lot of work to do, but perhaps this is the start of a new era for the PSP? Koller’s positive at least. Although, he would be, wouldn’t he?