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

Re:I, well a friend, bought my DS and...

[Mr.Dippy]

I love Mario 64 DS but god damn I want a new game! Wario Ware looks good but It's not a must have item for me so I'll wait. But hey, remember when Nintendo 64 came out and for like 2 months there was nothing but Mario and Pilot Wing? I'm looking foward next month to getting a copy of Metroid and sometiime this year the mario kart and castlevania games will be coming out.

1 per customer

[scottind]

My gamestop called me a couple days ago and told me that i couldnt pre-order 2 PSPs, so now i have 1 PSP completely paid off and about $80 worth of store credit. I think its their strategy to ensure more customers will get one. Needless to say i am pretty pissed off.

WEll, with this 1 mil news, i'm wondering about how good or bad the ebay "fervor rush" is going to be, i was originally hoping to sell my 2nd PSP to help cushion the purchase of the first.

Re:1 per customer

[IntergalacticWalrus]

That's hardly surprising. Nowadays whenever something big comes out, some fucker buys all units he can find so he can immediately resell them back at a much higher price on eBay.

Re:WHAT ABOUT EUROPE?

[superpulpsicle]

The original poster is not offtopic at all.

Sony is well known for deliving exactly just enough of whatever the suppliers ask. That's why there is such a ridiculous supply/demand problem. Europe and UK probably won't see it until it is a guaranteed success in the US after Japan. Sigh...

Re:FUD

[oGMo]

The price of the PSP is ONLY $100 more

Are you Canadian? Because in USD, the DS is $150, and the PSP is $185. That's $35 more.

but the games cost $10 to $20 more than the DS games (depending on the DS game) and $20 to $30 more than GBA titles (depending on the GBA game).

Like hell. New GBA titles are $30-35, as are DS titles (click the tab at the top). New PSP titles are $39-49, which is $5-15 more.

The UMD movies are going to cost in between $20 and $30 dollars

Maybe you're psychic, since no movie prices have been announced; but based on the other "facts" you've listed, you're not a very good one.

SanDisk memory cards required to play music cost between $55 (256MB) and $150 (1GB)

256MB memory stick pro cards are under $40 on Amazon.

The cost of buying the PSP and everything needed to take advantage of the PSP's features is well over double the cost of the DS.

While the EB site is forcing you to get a "bundle", that's not the only place you can get them. I've got a PSP alone on order from an EB store for $20.

Assuming you don't want to just use pictochat or play the Prime demo, you'll want a full game; that'll be an extra $30, putting your DS at $180. Double that is $360, so we've got some money to play with... $185 for the unit, $40 for the memstick, $50 for a game. That's $275, which is definitely more than your DS bundle, but then again you've got an MP3/movie player in the bundle too. Definitely not double the price.

And you have an actual selection of games to pick from, not... Mario64 DS.

Re:FUD

[sl3xd]

Remember, this is Sony, not Sega; they're good at the marketing thing.

Oddly enough, I seem to remember Sega being the company to beat before the days of the Saturn; in fact, I remember quite clearly when the Game Gear was impossible to get, because they were completely sold out.

And I've seen far more people playing games on a Nokia system (not n-gauge) than on any gameboy; I've seen people who wouldn't be caught dead playing on a console playing games on a Nokia phone. Nokia isn't inexperienced in the game market -- they honestly have higher penetration than Nintendo has with the GameBoy Advance. It's just that their purpose-built game-phone makes its owner look like an IDIOT when he is using it as a phone; this alone kept many from buying it.

I look at it this way: I've seen many portable systems by many talented companies.

Only one has ever been sucessful: Nintendo.

I'm no fanboy of either; the PSP has a large screen of supposedly great quality. Nintendo's answer to such a large screen was to have two smaller screens (one of them a touch screen). Both have wireless networking/multiplayer. I would give the durability nod to Nintendo -- both for its games and for the system itself. And durability is rather important for a portable system. The disc the PSP uses will definately reduce the playtime per charge. I've seen this show before, and it always goes very badly for Nintendo's competition.