Seven Seas Entertainment has announced that there have been more than 12,000 downloads from its Gomanga.com Website in the five days since the company made manga previews for the Sony Portable PlayStation (PSP) available.  Seven Seas is the first manga publisher to release free downloadable content for the Sony PSP and plans to provide additional chapters in the coming months.

Currently the first chapters of the top four Seven Seas titles, Amazing Agent Luna, Blade for Barter, Last Hope, and No Man's Land have all been made available for fans to download and read via the PSP's built-in photo viewer.  A total of 155 pages of manga have been specifically converted for optimal viewing on the PSP, providing readers with 30-40 pages from each of the four manga series.

The handheld Sony PSP has spearheaded a substantial increase in sales of videogame hardware (and software) so far in 2005.  The PSP is a true multi-media platform; in addition to games the device also offers movie viewing.  The first wave of PSPs sold in the U.S. came with Spider-Man II, and many of the major Hollywood studios (such as Disney) are providing programming, creating mini-dvds designed especially for the PSP (though this programming, unlike a Seven Seas' download, isn't free). 

Retailers might well want to alert their customers who have PSP units to the free manga downloads -- it's another cool thing they can do with their high tech gaming device and it should spur additional interest in Seven Seas' manga line.  Videogames are an often ignored vector for manga and anime properties here in the U.S. since fans often become aware of manga and anime titles because of the video games made from them (or vice versa as in the case of the Megaman NT Warrior manga).  The PSP's ability to display downloaded visual entertainment such as manga can make this a direct connection rather than an indirect one.