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First Week PSP Sales Results
Gamespot has results from the first week of PSP sales. Unit sales have already cracked 600,000, generating in the neighborhood of $US 150 million for Sony. From the article: "Sony would only say that the device sold 'over half a million units' during its first 48 hours on the market, meaning it sold only approximately 100,000 units continent-wide over the next five days--at best. Still, Sony said the tally was enough to 'further validate PSP as the most anticipated product of 2005 and an industry-altering force.'"
Your list of reasons seem to give both reasons for it selling well, and for it *not* selling well. Weird, that.
All things considered, they came into a market dominated by Nintendo and are outselling the Nintendo DS by I'd say a margin very close to 2:1. That, by any measurement, is monstrous success.
Except it's a new release, and the DS sold much better during the same period of its release. So the PSP is not a monstrous success "by any measurement."
While it's difficult to argue against the potential selling power of GTA on the PSP, remember that the PSP is less powerful than the PS2, and Rockstar's first true-3D GTA was for that system. It's almost as much up in the air as how well that will work as it is how Katamari Damacy will work on the DS. (I've got my fingers crossed on that one....) And Nintendo *does* have some interesting DS software in the works, like Nintendogs, Meteos, a new 2D Super Mario Bros., Advance Wars, and other things.
Anyway, none of this means that the PSP won't win out in the long run... but neither does it mean the DS won't. It'll be more competitive than the PS2/Gamecube fight.