1 Million PSPs Confirmed for U.S. Launch

GamesIndustry.biz has the word that Sony has one million PSP units queued up for the U.S. launch on March 24th. Their hope is to ship over three million units by the end of their fiscal year, a somewhat daunting task as the EU launch has been pushed beyond the end of Sony's fiscal year-end. From the article: "The company had previously said that it would manufacture a million units for the North American launch, but it hadn't been clear how many of those units would actually be on shelves, and how many would be stuck further back in the chain - in factories, warehouses or transit."

Comments

Sittin On The Hands

[blueZhift]

As hard as it will be, I'm going to be sitting on my hands for this one. I want to see how many of them break in the first batch and I also want to see how the software market develops for the PSP before committing any cash. Oh and let's not forget about the hacks that will develop! Hopefully it won't be too hard to get some homebrew software running on the PSP.

I got to be honest

[falcon5768]

I really am having a hard time justifying buying one, at least for the time being with no software out for it.

Granted I bought a Gameboy a long time ago and have bought them since, but in this case unlike that gameboy of years ago, I have problems with this one catching on for even as well as the GameGear did, which while short was still longer than say the Lynx or NGage.

Re:I got to be honest

[falcon5768]

thats 24, Gameboy might only have 12 or so DS titles but they have all the advance titles which makes it much easier to justify since you have well over 100 of those

likewise of those 24, most of them are sports games. I would not be buying a PSP just to play soccer which at the moment is all the PSP seems good for.

Re:I got to be honest

[oGMo]

hats 24, Gameboy might only have 12 or so DS titles but they have all the advance titles which makes it much easier to justify since you have well over 100 of those

Maybe it justifies it if you don't already have a GBA SP. Maybe. Especially since you can't play multiplayer GBA games with the DS, or hook it up to your Cube (one of Nintendo's major GBA accessories).

likewise of those 24, most of them are sports games. I would not be buying a PSP just to play soccer which at the moment is all the PSP seems good for.

Most? Even if you count THUG as a sports game (which it's not), that's still 14 non-sports titles; that's more than half. Racing games aren't sports either, although there are only 3 of those, all very different.

Soccer is all the PSP is good for? There are RPGs, shooters, fighters, puzzlers, racers, sports, x-sports, all at launch. Big-name titles like Metal Gear, Tony Hawk, Twisted Metal, Wipeout, Dynasty Warriors, etc. What else do you want here exactly?

The DS has Mario64. And that one Metroid demo. And PictoChat. If you want to play GBA games, get an SP.

FUD

[oGMo]

You clearly have no idea what you're talking about. "No software" may be a problem with the DS for the foreseeable future, but there are 24 launch titles for the PSP, and more (such as GTA) during launch week/launch month.

These are far more titles with far bigger names than the PS2 had at launch; now with a million PSPs promised, and with a price not significantly higher than the Nintendo DS, they should have the critical mass they need.

Remember, this is Sony, not Sega; they're good at the marketing thing. This is also not a dying Atari or an inexperienced Nokia.