With the announcement of the PSP minis program early last week it's been an interesting look at the now large variety of digital download avenues now available to Indie developers - but we stil don't know a whole lot about it. Today PocketGamer came across a "Level 2 Confidential" document from Sony Entertainment Europe's licensing website TPRnet revealing details on the intent of the PSP minis program and what developers will be dealing with.

Let's have a look, step by step:

There is no requirement for content approval

For some time it's been known that the PlayStation Network has been keeping a tight leash around concept approval. Sometimes in the most bizarre circumstances - such as Sony Europe approving of Outrun Online Arcade while Sony of America passed on it. Now it seems that Sony Europe will not be doing such a thing, and will instead let the buyers decide.

This could be a good and bad thing - on one hand a lot of smaller developers who don't have the pull of a large publisher can get their game on the marketplace - on the other hand it could mean a lot of awful games could come to the platform. Going by the current list it doesn't seem to be much of a problem though.

As this is a SCEE document it is unknown whether this is the same for the American arm of SCE.

SCEE is ‘open for business’ and looking for minis developers right now

With the list of PSP mini games showing off the variety of publishers and developers, Sony continues to bring more to the table - simply register your company on SCEE's TPRnet website.

Quality Assurance (QA) is transparent, trackable and predictable

On the PlayStation 3 it's been difficult to see where a game is during certification - "Dude, where's Fat Princess?!" and so forth. Now Sony appears to be streamlining the process a little more, allowing developers to see their updates somewhat on the fly. They also expect the time taken for the QA process to be much shorter - but I'd imagine they're assuming that the PSP mini system doesn't become ar large as the iPhone platform, which tends to take weeks to a month before being made available.

SCEE offers monthly revenue, no penalties for minimum sales, no quota of games on publisher, no bandwidth charges

Publishers will receive their earnings made on a monthly basis - much like how the PSN already operates. However they've also made it clear that there will be no penalties for minimum sales - it was revealed some months ago that WiiWare developers will not get any money unless they reach a certain threshold in sales.

There is also no quota for the amount of games being released through a publisher. The Xbox Live Arcade had (or has) some policies regarding how many games a publisher could release a month - Sierra during its prime was releasing a game a month. With no quota you could see a company like Gameloft or Sega release several games in a month.

It was also revealed that games, demos, and anything on the PlayStation Network required a 16 cents fee per gigabyte of data - this will not be the case for PSP mini games.

Publisher retains control of release dates

Currently Microsoft keeps a tight leash on when new Xbox Live Arcade titles are released - it's not due to any real draconian policy - it's that the Wednesday only release style has now become overly cramped. It appears that publishers will have complete control for the PSP mini games - whether that means they can release a game on any day of the week, ala iPhone games, or whether they can choose the specific Thursday to be released with the PlayStation Store update, it unclear.

The current price for a PSP™ Development Tool is €1200

Earlier this year PSP development kit prices were slashed by 80% - we can now reveal that it only costs €1200 (likely $1200USD) to get a PSP development kit. In comparison iPhone SDK and XNA Indie Games simply require the $99 subscription fee, but in the case of the iPhone a Macintosh Computer is also required. Either way it's an incredibly good price for small developers to get in on the action.

You can read the document for yourself if you wish. It's still uncertain if the games will be based on any price tier system or whether or not seperate submissions per region is required - you may have noticed that all PR for PSP minis have been directly from SCEE while SCEA haven't said a word.

Source: Pocket Gamer - Sony's PSP Minis confidential approval document leaks onto web