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DS Dominates Japanese PSP Sales 3:1
Just on the heels of the good news for PSP Slim sales numbers comes an analysis by a Japanese business firm essentially saying that the PSP's competitor, the DS, is single-handedly driving the Japanese gaming market. "The DS, which Enterbrain says sold 3.478 million units (including both DS and DS Lite) in the fiscal first half, outsold Sony's PSP, at 1.07 million units, about three to one. Enterbrain added that console sales, encompassing Wii and PlayStation 3, also bolstered the market, which expanded by 33.5 percent to ¥138.3 billion ($1.2 billion), while software sales were also up 12.8 percent to ¥154.5 billion ($1.34 billion). Reuters cited the same Enterbrain report when it noted that in April through September, Wii outsold the PlayStation 3 by more than four to one in Japan, with 1.6 Wii units sold versus 385,492 PS3s."
Here's a recent survey from Japan showing that elementary school kids prefer almost everything else bar the Xbox!
Okay, show of hands, who here is actually surprised that the DS is outselling the PSP? Its like asking who here is surprised that the PC is outselling the Mac. This does not mean that either the Mac or the PSP are not doing well, I mean, those sales figures are nothing to sneeze at. It just means that others are outselling them.
Wii strokin' time!!!
I just got back from a week-long trip to Tokyo, and I can say first-hand that the DS is everywhere there. In the time I spent riding subways and trains in the city, I must have seen 50 DS's in use by Tokyo residents. It was rare to get on a train and not see someone using a DS. The variety of titles available for the platform is also staggeringly wide compared to what we have in North America. Some of the more interesting titles I saw: - an interactive wine appreciation guide called "Sommelier DS", as well as an equivalent title for sake - numerous training titles for kanji - numerous training titles for english It's no wonder the DS is selling well in Japan, with the breadth of available Japanese titles it's a viable purchase for anyone who speaks Japanese, young or old, gamer or non-gamer.
How do you get 3/5 of a unit? Did the submitter mean 1.6 million Wii units?
We all know what to do, but we don't know how to get re-elected once we have done it
My mother just bought Brain Age yesterday, and borrowed my DS, because she saw my nephews playing it on theirs. (I gave it to them when I got bored of it, never thinking she might care.) She'll probably buy a DS of her own soon, and she's talking about buying one for my father for the Sudoku and Picross games on it.
My mother also has a Nintendo Wii that she (and my niece and sister) play quite a bit.
Nintendo has really figured out how to capture the 'casual' gamer. I paid for half the Wii because I knew she'd enjoy the Wii bowling, but when she said she wanted a DS, I just stared at her for a moment.
To be fair, she previously bought a PSP because it 'looked neat', but only ever played Lumines twice before I found her a buyer for it to get her money back. And she hasn't bought the DS yet, but does plan to.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
Seems to me that if 1.6 Wii's were sold and 385,492 PS3s were sold that the PS3 would have a pretty good lead... Is this 1.6:1 Wii vs PS3 here or what? You'd think it was a problem with the summery, but this is a quote from TFA...
This sig isn't original enough, it's time to come up with something witty...
I have a DS with M3 Simply homebrew/warez card and must say I am very satisfied with it. Lots of good games, great homebrew being written, and Opera on DS has saved me many times when I needed a network connection but left my laptop in my other pants.
The only problem is that here no one else seem to have it, at least I have never seen another one but mine. In the 3rd world developing country I live, I can't just go playing in the subway or I will most probably end without it since it would draw so much attention. There are many games that I would like to play multiplayer but can't.
Guess I have to wait more.
find -name "*base*" -exec chown us {} \; ; ln -s
I was in Tokyo a month ago.
At Yobodashi(9 floor store) in Akihabara, I saw 3 Wiis being rung up simultaenously. After doing my shopping there, I stop in the little park-area outside the shop. There was a group of 4 people with a STACK of Wiis, must have been like 14-15 or so. All of them were in Yobodashi bags. Musta been hoarding.
Yes, this is important because Japan is totally a bigger gaming zone than the whole USA and Europe together.
Your product doesn't sell good in Japan == you fail at selling whatsoever.
Why is this even here?
(This post may contain slight traces of sarcasm.)
I've bought a PSP Slim only for homebrew. I don't care about games although I'll try to find a second hand copy of Wipeout Pure as I have fond memories of the original PSX game.
For someone like me, the DS hardware is a joke and can't touch the PSP. As much as I dislike Sony's practices Nintendo is just the lesser of two evils. I'd never buy a product from Microsoft, though. I have a reputation.
Glass -- pwnag3
If I WERE to buy a new handheld, it'd be the DS Lite hands down winner. It has more games that I'm interested(dungeon crawls) plus some other ones that are worthwhile, mainly being nintendo's own games, e.g. mario, metroid, etc.
The PSP COULD have had a chance if some of the types of games that I were interested were actually released in markets outside of Japan, but they haven't been so far. The PSP is in the same boat that the psx was in when I looked at consoles at that time, alot of interesting games that were released in Japan only, then FFVII for the psx pushed me towards buying one, then we got a relative flood of JRPGs which is mostly what I want in consoles, plus some other decent games like the first Blood Omen(Kain series) game. Didn't care for others in the series as they moved straight away from the formula that made me like the first installment.
Regular consoles: Same goes again, M$ again thinks that consolejacking PC games and shoehorning them into a console is some how a good idea(TM), Sony with the PS3 what arrogant and disdainful of former customers but hedged their bets on the consolejacking aas it will still get some decent consoles games, while Nintendo kept the prices low, performance reasonable, and has, so far, focused exclusive on console type of games which is exactly what I want in a console, hence I'd be buying a Wii if I were to run out and buy a console tomorrow.
...according to vgchartz.com there are 23.79M PSPs out there. That's a lot of systems and most would say a sign of success. It's only once you look at Nintendo's numbers - 50.64M - that there's a sign of something amiss. That doesn't change the fact that there are 24M PSPs, though, and that's a lot.
I bought a DS and a PSP both when they first came out. I will agree that with standard firmware the DS is better than the PSP, but with custom firmware, the PSP is much, much more interesting. I am not a Sony fanboy (I dont like sony's in your face attitude or business practices), in fact quite the oposite I am a huge Nintendo fan, I have owned every Nintendo system (except the virtual boy), going back to the 'game and watch' and 'table top arcade' games (I had Donkey Kong). In my opinion the PSP is just a better piece of hardware. I suggest picking up a PSP cheap from eBay, from all those that are rushing to sell their PSP to play brain age, put custom firmware on it, get an $80 4GB memory card, and enjoy all the endless homebrew apps.
This is the kind of announcement that has been copied and pasted every month since the DS took off. The only thing different about the text of this press release is that it mentioned the PSP Slim launch. They even took the time to mention the Wii killing the PS3. I am a die-hard Nintendo fan, but even I'm getting sick of the broken record...
/. worthy news post if everyone already knows?
How is this a
The PSP Slim and FF7 Crisis Core got a week or so of the PSP outselling the DS about 3-1... But it may not last.
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I agree...not beating the DS does not mean you're a failure. In fact, PSP could conceivably sell the second most hardware among the five next-gen platforms, and seems near-guaranteed to be at least third. It currently has a roughly 12 million lead on the Wii, and is selling reasonably well in all regions. Yeah, it's been outsold by the Wii for the past few months, but not by such a large amount that it couldn't potentially match the Wii's pace if some killer-app made the PSP cool again (as shown by the past two weeks of Japanese sales--I wouldn't be surprised if PSP stayed ahead of Wii on a weekly basis until Mario Galaxy stops that dead). And well...nobody's calling the Wii a failure....
Thats an unfair comparison.
You are comparing a hacked PSP to a DS instead of a hacked PSP to a hacked DS. DS homebrew is great my DS can play movies, have books in it, have all PDA functionality, play music, play SCUMM, have a whole host of homebrew games and a hell of a lot of other stuff.
When it comes down to it the DS beats the PSP in its own right and when you hack them both you have all the same stuff _and_ the DS beats the PSP in its own right.
I would advise you get on ebay buy a cheap DS and an M3 card and enjoy all the endless homebrew apps _or_ play its, largely considered to be far superior, set of games.
I already have a DS as I mentioned in my original post, and I have done custom stuff on that as well with a programable GBA cart... and it wasnt as good as the PSP with custom firmware. I would go blind watching a movie on the DS... I think I will hang on to the DS in case any future games catch my interest, but seriously nothing beats a customized PSP, it can emulate virtually anything, including NES, SNES, GBA, and even DS emulation is in the works.
Seriously, WiiSports is THE system seller. If you can get your wife some place where it is being played it should help a lot. If she plays any of the sports (Golf, Tennis, Bowling) it also helps. My parents have never had any interest in Video games either, and currently they own their own Wii, WiiPlay and Tiger Woods golf.
They were sold on it due to WiiSports. When I set it up, they had fun making the Mii's with everyone laughing, and offering suggestions. We even had 3 generations of my family playing Bowling... We all lost to my 84 year old Grandma. :)
The Wii (and WiiSports) is just another "Family game activity" like the Monopoly night she grew up with. If you can get her in an environment where she can see the camaraderie and interaction of the players she can better understand the appeal.
I'm curious to see how they implement dual screens and a touch screen in software for that DS emulation. I sort of understand the mindset of doing something just to see if it can be done, but I hope that we don't have to hear people going around telling everyone that the PSP can act as a DS.
(You'd likely be able to play Advance Wars 2 reasonably well, and that wouldn't be so bad)
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
I agree the PSP is great for homebrew, and I personally love hacking systems and the freedom that comes with; I'm not giving up my hacked DS phat for the world! But if homebrew drove the market, the GP2X would be killing.
I've yet to attempt homebrewing with my DSLite, but while it may offer many of the same homebrewing capabilities as the PSP, the capability of having a truly portable PS1 is what sold me on getting a PSP, as there's tons of cool games that I'd missed the first go around paired with a lot of time away from home for mobile gaming. That and the amazing screen. Looking at stock capabilities, DS wins on the gaming front hands down, but the PSP is a lot more useful as a portable media device than I had ever really expected.
Well, there's also the question of expectations. After the success of the PS2 and the stagnancy of the GBA, everyone expected Sony to beat Nintendo in the handheld market. When the DS was announced, people thought Nintendo was insane and doomed. It was laughable to expect something quirky like the DS to even sell half as well as something like the PSP. In fact, Nintendo itself said that the DS was only a third pillar next to the GBA, and the real GBA2 would come later. Pre-launch, Sony actually said comparisons between the PSP and the DS were unfair - to Nintendo.
It hasn't quite turned out that way. The DS is outselling the PSP 2:1 worldwide, when everyone expected the PSP to outsell the DS at least 5:1. And that's why the PSP is a failure: Not because it's doing poorly, but because it should be doing a lot better.
Wii Sports isn't a video game. It's a simplistic sports simulator. People who hate video games generally (in my experience) love Wii Sports. Also, if she likes Monopoly, buy her Mario Party 8. You can even buy hotels in that game :-)
This is completely off-topic, but I'll be terribly sad to see the DS go. It's the last bastion of high-quality 2D gaming. After the DS, 2D will be dead. Even cell phone games are in 3D nowadays. So enjoy the days of top-notch 2D gaming while they last.
I've been living in HK for more than a month now, and take the train (MTR) everyday to school. So far, there is not a time where I didn't see someone playing with a DS lite. I see PSP players too, but the DS players outnumber them about 4:1.