Hey all! I’m P.J. Snavely, senior producer for SCEA here in sunny San Diego. For everybody that read my last post on High Velocity Bowling and left comments, thank you very much. I’m looking forward to the release of that title in the next few weeks. I also share time on another project that’s been my baby since its inception and that’s NBA ’08 on PSP.

NBA ’08 for the PSP is our fourth iteration of basketball on the handheld platform. Over the past three versions, we’ve always tried to be on the leading edge of combining simulation NBA basketball with some new and innovative ideas in the genre – things that would be fun and different to play. Personally, I find it very frustrating when developers bring an identical version of a sports game to the PSP, so we’ve gone out of our way to ensure that NBA ‘08 is significantly different than its PS2/PS3 brethren.

Along those lines, we came up with a concept for a “Basketball meets Risk” type of game mode that we call Conquest. In Conquest, you pick an NBA team and then try to “capture” other NBA cities by playing them head-to-head. If you win, you take over that city and all of its players. Should you lose, the defending city has the option to steal one of your players. We’ve also thrown in little gameplay twists, like if you occupy all five teams within a division, you can unlock a historic player who will come out of retirement and play for you. It’s a great combination of planning and “strategery” and (imho) a better gameplay experience than a typical Franchise mode.

Hope you enjoy the game – it hits shelves Tuesday, October 2nd!