In Which I Compliment the PSP (Sort Of)
April 7th, 2007Gamasutra has a very interesting take on the PSP, which I had pretty much written off at this point. As the article points out, the PSP has actually sold fairly respectably; Ed Barton of Screen Digest estimates cumulative software sales of about $4.5B by the end of 2007. The problem is that relative to its competitor, the Nintendo DS, it’s an extremely distant second.
I can’t consider anything that sells that much an out-and-out failure by any means. It would help to know the total cost to Sony and the developers to determine just how profitable this enterprise is, but in any case not a failure at all. But how does Sony leverage this investment into something that could really compete with the DS?
I think the “answer” here is in something David Cole (DFC Intelligence) says. When asked about his general thoughts, he responds:
“[T]he PSP could really use a new model. This has been the secret to Nintendo’s success. When GBA sales slowed, Nintendo introduced the GBA SP, which addressed many of the system’s problems. Ditto introducing the DS Lite last year to improve on the DS. Much will depend on how much emphasis Sony plans to put on the system going forward.”
The key here isn’t the need to push a new model per se, it’s to build on the goodwill that Sony’s developed through the PSP. You’re able to leverage the franchises you’ve developed to produce new, more polished iterations that appeal to former fans while creating new ones. This is a strategy that Nintendo’s perfected - people bought the DS because they anticipated strong updates of old franchises plus clever twists due to the touchscreen interface and dual screens.
This is something of a catch-22 for Sony though. They need to be willing to invest in pushing lots of new quality software that won’t sell with DS numbers, and keep that support up in both first and third parties, at the same time that it develops future PSP models. Nintendo has a huge lead, and it’s going to take a lot to dent that support. That said, it seems pretty clear that there’s an appetite for an up-market handheld, and if Sony doesn’t mind being 2nd, it might stay in that position very profitably.
Posted in Geoff, PSP, Sony |
April 25th, 2007 at 9:39 pm
Most of the sales of PSPs were from people who like the PS brand in consoles and once the intellegent ones realized how retarded the thing was, the negative hype started. Then there are people (I happen to know one) that were either too dumb to see the the PSP was crap, too ignorant to know they were missing out on something better, or too much of a tool to admit that the PSP was crap.
While it may be profitable to Sony, the PSP will never truly be comparable to the Game Boy line. They will always be a distant second and their appearance in the informed pubic will always be the the company that could never grasp portable gaming.
April 25th, 2007 at 10:24 pm
I think the PSP is starting to show some life, actually. I did a comparison of Gamerankings reviews for PSP and DS games and was surprised at what I found. We haven’t written much on the PSP yet here, so you can find it just by looking at the PSP category. I’m not quite ready to plunk down the cash for one yet (I, of course, already own a DS Lite), but at some point I just might. There are plenty of games to get started with on it now.