Piracy
all the PSP owners i know ,except me, bought it because of it

1. It had a ton of hype behind it, it was announced during the era the PS2's popularity and dominance. There were big games like GTA and FF announced for it from the start. That's what helped propel it initially.

2. The PSP what hacked to hell and back, which kept hardware sales up, but in turn killed software sales.

I bought 4 PSPs, I loved them.

It succeeded because it had great games and WiFi before any smartphones had it.

300: march to glory and Battlefront: renegade squadron were gems.

moonsta honta!

I had one. I got it because I liked the PS2, it had GTA and FF, and most of all because it had great multi-media abilities. Also, it looked cool. After a while phones offered the multimedia abilites, I found that it was a little to bulky to make a great portable and I found GTA is better on a console. I stopped using it pretty quick, probably had 4 or 5 games. I also found myself jealous of people playing NSMB on DS. None of what sucked me in with the PSP is of value to me now, so I would never consider a Vita.

In order of importance, imo:

1 - Piracy. The ultimate system seller (same goes for the DS too)

2 - PS2 was THE videogame market back then. PSP was simply created to be the next PS2, now on the go.

3 - Monster Hunter and GTA, the two incredibly important games.

4 - Great support from companies like Capcom, Konami, Level 5, Square...

If you think about it, everything Vita does not have in the moment.

there where no tablets on the market back then

i remember it did have a must have hype at the time from the younger ones,it was the other alternative with a strong brand like people said,videos & movies etc,not that they really took off i guess but people must have liked it when they first got it

I bought it for Crisis Core. And to hack. Now I have hacked Iphone. And 3DS because 3D is pretty.

It was easy to pirate and better hardware then the DS.

It was the go-to handheld for emulators/handheld apps and pirated games.

Most people i know had their PSP's hacked to high heaven for SNES emulators and the like.