PSP Still Struggling For Notice

TheStreet.com is reporting that the 360 has captured the hype machine for this Christmas season. The PSP, meanwhile, is still struggling for mindshare compared to Nintendo's offerings. From the article: "Sony launched the PSP in the U.S. to great acclaim earlier this year and sold more than half a million units in the first two days. The device marked the first effort by Sony, the leader in the console game industry for the last 10 years with its PlayStation and PlayStation 2 systems, to enter the portable game market, which has been dominated by Nintendo ... Right now, the PSP's threat to Nintendo -- much less to Apple -- remains hypothetical. Sales of the PSP are disappointing thus far, particularly this holiday season. Through the end of October, Sony had sold just 1.6 million of the devices after the first days' sales flurry."

Comments

It gets worse for the PSP

[buffer-overflowed]

in Japan. Where Animal Crossing[Forest] is pulling another Nintendogs and widening the gap even further. Nov 21 - 27.

Re:It gets worse for the PSP

[buffer-overflowed]

Because it bucks Sony fan predictions that the huge lead the DS went into(over 1 million units in japan alone) this year with(because of shortages, right, the figures now say differently) would somehow be reversed. Instead the short-term trend we saw up until March(5k more PSPs per DSes sold per 2-week period) reversed drastically with Nintendogs, calmed down again(but the PSP never regained a sales lead) and is getting worse again with Animal Crossing. The game sales trend has continued(no PSP game has yet to hit the top 10 or crack 300k units), and now we're at the DS having 66% of the next-gen handheld market and sales are picking up.

In the US, the situation is similar. Not sure about Europe. But Europe has never really mattered, and even if Sony sold every last unit they claim to have shipped there it still wouldn't push them above that 33% share globally(and note that 33% figure doesn't even take into account the GBA and GBA SP, which have sold as many units as the freakin PS2)... so who cares?

When it costs an order of magnitude more to develop on a platform, and you barely sell enough to break even, you don't pump a bunch of money into new projects. Not when it's an incredibly distant 3rd place platform. You're already seeing this as title flow slows down. It doesn't make business sense to throw your weight behind a platform like that. So people aren't.

The PSP is the gamegear 2.0, Sony has horridly failed to dethrone Nintendo in the handheld space, and unless something drastic happens, soon, it's all-but-dead. Things are bleak, hope you didn't buy one.

Re:It gets worse for the PSP

[Thwomp]

So you look at a 7-day period and claim the sales are better? I'm sure we can find an arbitrary 7-day period where the PSP sold more, too.

It's certainly possible but not likely. More info on Japanese sales.

Re:What the--

[buffer-overflowed]

You're confusing shipped with sold. The article makes the distinction.

IE: If retailers order 10 for their stock and don't sell them, you've shipped 10 units, but you're not shipping more until some of those 10 units sell.

I'm not sure how many units Nintendo has actually shipped worldwide. I'm positive it's higher than 10 mil if they've sold 8 mil.

Stating the Obvious

[3dfxgamer]

Apple vs. Microsoft
Game Gear vs. Gameboy
PSP vs. Nintendo DS
The common denominator is the price difference. The fact that a product is far superior doesn't mean that it will sell better. People will usually go with a lower cost alternative. And often if they can afford the more expensive product they end up buying the cheaper one also.

Re:Who are these people?

[oGMo]

Slow out the gate? Wtf? Slow out the gate is having your console selling game released 6 months AFTER the system is released. Having a PS2 port come out a YEAR after the system is released is trying to breath life into the dead.

What, exactly, does this sentence mean... in English? "Having your console selling game released 6 month after the system is released"? What PS2 port came out a year after the system was released? The system hasn't even been out for a year.

Sony just plain mismanaged the PSP. The movies offer little that DVDs don't outmatch, let alone the bonuses.

Except now you can pick them up for $5-10 from Frys and watch them on a device that's easy to carry on the bus or plane. (Same with TV shows.)

The games are few, far and are often times nothing more than ports.

This, of course, is bullshit. See the following:

• Darkstalkers: Chronicles
• Twisted Metal: Head On
• Metal Gear Acid
• Legend of Heroes ("The Garghav")
• Kingdom of Paradise
• Wipeout: Pure
• Mercury
• Lumines
• Hot Shots Golf
• Untold Legends
• Ridge Racer
• Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories
• Tokobot
• Lord of the Rings Tactics
• Need for Speed Underground Rivals
• The Con
• Gripshift
• MediEval: Resurrection
• Death Jr.
• Coded Arms
• Burnout Legends
• Infected
• SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs Fireteam Bravo

These are fully PSP originals (though some may be sequels or have a related franchise). For games that include ports or remakes:

Tony Hawk Underground 2: Remix (extended version of THUG2) Ape Escape PoPoLoCrois

Note that PoPoLoCrois has never been released here, and is thus a "new" game to most people who would be playing it in the US.

Additionally, there are titles that are "cross-platform", that is, appearing close to or simultaneously with the game as released on other platforms, such as X-Men Legends II, and various sports games I don't know enough about to list properly.

Yes, there could be more; there will be more. But compared to the PS2's first 6-12 months, we're doing pretty good already. And there have been far more B to A titles for the PSP than there were for the PS2. So don't give me this "there are no games" BS. There are plenty of games.

Online capabilities is a joke, and trying to stop the PSP hackers has more or less alienated the PSP as a portable hackable Xbox.

Huh? The online capabilities of the PSP rock. It's got a builtin web browser that works very well. It's trivially easy to configure. You can play almost everything over the internet or ad-hoc. Power usage is reasonable and latency is great. Most games support at least some form of online play (the RPGs being the biggest exception).

As for trying to stop people from hacking the device, what do you expect? Sure, it'd be great if they released an SDK... I'd be all for that. But who else has done that? Nintendo? Hah. Microsoft? Hah.

In any case, the 1.5 and 2nd generation of games are starting to come through, and I've still got most of the existing ones to finish. The next-gen handheld race has hardly begun.

Re:Keep it or ditch it?

[xtieburn]

These days you can get SD based carts for the DS for about 50 quid including the adapter to play DS ROMs. Which means its still about 50 quid cheaper in total than the PSP. Also all your media for it will be cheap multifunctional SD.

I dont know how recently you tried the SNES emulator but it can play a fair few games at full speed, and each update a great deal more are added. A fair distance from being completed and I dont think on par with the PSP but SNES9x (the PSP one ive tried. There may be others.) is hardly perfect either. (Speed issues abounded but I havent tried it for a bit.)

Course most of this doesnt mean much to me anyhow I have my DS because of DS and GBA games, Ill let my X-Box handle the console emulation. Id still say spending nearly 200 on a PSP for its SNES and NES playback is verging on the very silly though. If you want emulators and homebrew youd buy a GP2X.