When SCE Worldwide Studio boss Shuhei Yoshida got involved with Sony’s upcoming hand held, NGP, one of the first things he wanted to do was encourage the company to go “back to the basics.” By this, he meant that he wanted them to return to the days of the original PlayStation and to develop the hardware in similar fashion — with developer support. This is why you heard so many rumors and so much praise from developers about the device early on as each developer basically had a hand in creating the finalized product.

During an interview with the PlayStation Blog, Yoshida explained that gaining feedback from external developers has been invaluable to the creative process of the PSP2 and that it is definitely a better device because of it.

“As a result of this, we went through many iterations of PSP2,” he said. “It reminded me of the early days of the original PlayStation, when we visited many developers and publishers to get feedback during the development of that product.

“It’s almost as if SCE has gone back to basics, which should be a good thing,” he said.

This is a positive step forward for the video game giant because the company definitely took a different approach with the PlayStation 3 and the earlier struggles this generation is a big indicator of that change. Hopefully getting back to the basics pays off like they’re hoping and we see great things out of the PSP2 in the future.