PSP's Marcus campaign "showed positive sales effects," says McCarthy

PlayStation software senior brand manager Scott McCarthy has said that the firm's PSP campaign, starring that snarky kid Marcus Rivers, has paid-off for Sony.

Speaking with Industry Gamers, McCarthy said even with its fair share of piracy problems, Sony still believes in PSP as a platform, and will use lessons learned with it as NGP gets closer to launch.

"Piracy is what it is. It's one of those double edged swords," said McCarthy. "We're still moving hardware. I think our struggles have been on the software side, and for obvious reasons. A lot of those things we've taken into account with our efforts moving forward."

While McCarthy couldn't "get into," just how well sales of PSP have been since the Marcus campaign launched during E3 2010, he did say it had a positive impact on hardware movement.

"I think the Marcus campaign, and the PSP campaign in general, showed positive sales effects," he said. "When the consumers vote, they do so with their dollars, and we saw positive movement on the hardware side."

NGP is expected to release in time for the holidays this year.