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Sony Winding Down the PSP
Linnen writes "Sony has started the process of phasing out its PSP handheld console. From The Guardian: 'Shipments to the U.S. ended this year, and they are closing in Japan soon. European stores will see their last arrivals toward Christmas. Launched in Japan in December 2004, it is almost 10 years old – not a bad achievement for a handheld that was almost written off early in its lifespan. ... The console struggled with high piracy levels of its titles, which meant the likes of EA, Activision and Ubisoft were reticent about committing to major development projects. However, the ease with which hackers were able to break the device's security system also meant that it became a favorite with the homebrew development scene, and amateur coders are still producing games and demos for the platform. Some look back on the machine as a failure beside the all-conquering Nintendo DS, but this is unfair. The console sold 80m units, a figure boosted by a series of excellent hardware and featureset updates, including the slimmer PSP-2000 and PSP-3000 models. '"
The PSP was NOT written off early into its lifespan. Approaching launch, every major media outlet championed it as the obvious victor in the portable space, expecting the DS to get absolutely fucked. The DS didn't take its first significant lead until the end of 2005, and it wasn't until 2007 that the PSP was written off.
Selling 80 million units doesn't mean shit when you're selling below / near cost and you're not selling software.
Subsequent PSP models were not easily hacked (and I believe the later models remain unhacked today). But if you still want to blame the failure on piracy, how are you going to explain the DS? All DS models, including the DSi, are easily hackable, and piracy was (and still is) absolutely rampant.
The later PSP models didn't represent "excellent hardware and featureset updates", they represented haphazard attempts to lower costs while sacrificing build and component quality, while providing only minor improvements. It took 3 years to get the first revision out and it's main claims to fame were the smaller size and shittier quality screen. And what about the abortion that was the PSP Go or the time wasted on PSP Phone attempts? The Go was roundly rejected. I believe there were a few models of phones branded with Playstation, PSN, or "Xperia Play" that actually got released in various markets, but they obviously bombed as well - none of them actually played PSP games despite the hardware ability and obvious design "similarities" between them and the PSP Go. It was just a sub section of stuff available through PSN (but not the real PSN).
Sony's failure with the PSP was due to ridiculous proprietary storage format and the overall price of the system. Because of the costs, they simply could not get an install base worth developing for. Developing a major title for Vita was a huge risk that rarely paid off. On the other hand, the DS had a PS2-like install base - you could release utter trash and expect a profit.