Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

PSP Still Struggling For Notice

Posted by Zonk on from the more-games-might-help dept.

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."

5 of 111 comments (clear)

  1. It gets worse for the PSP by buffer-overflowed · · Score: 3, Informative

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

    --
    The key to the enjoyment of pop music is to replace any instance of "love" with "C.H.U.D."
    1. Re:It gets worse for the PSP by buffer-overflowed · · Score: 2, Informative

      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.

      --
      The key to the enjoyment of pop music is to replace any instance of "love" with "C.H.U.D."
    2. Re:It gets worse for the PSP by Thwomp · · Score: 2, Informative
      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.

  2. Re:What the-- by buffer-overflowed · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

    --
    The key to the enjoyment of pop music is to replace any instance of "love" with "C.H.U.D."
  3. Re:Keep it or ditch it? by xtieburn · · Score: 2, Informative

    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.