Should the PSP be viewed as a succes or a failure?

[Deguello]

I think another often cited but little proven "fact" of the PSP's "success" is the notion that Sony is making a profit on the PSP. I have yet to ever see this being the case and in fact hear stories to the contrary, as poor game sales and loss leader strategies combined with the PS3's failure to take off led to their recent Games Division loss.

A list of consoles the PSP has outsold is cute, but unfortunately irrelevant. His competition is the DS and the DS is eating his lunch. It doesn't matter if he outsold the Xbox or Gamecube, which are in three-way competitions (four-way if you count DC) in totally different market dynamics. He's running the 100 yard dash, nobody cares if he ran faster than some of the hurlders.

Just the fact that this topic EXISTS shows that there is some insecurity about whether the PSP is a success. You can't make this topic about the DS and come away sane. The "taking marketshare" idea is also somewhat suspect considering that the DS is selling much faster than its predecessor (even to the point of besting the PS2 in Japan soon), which means Nintendo's market is actually quite unaffected. Nintendo expanded their own market, while the PSP gets marketshare by merely existing and being called a "Playstation" item at a time when the PS2 had 80 million units sold. Compared to a legacy like that, it's easy to seen why the PSP is just a failure. A higher-than-usual sales number is still not indicative of success and comparison to OTHER FAILURES (what are you trying to prove saying it sold more than GC or Xbox?) is not either.

IT's just one of those things you are going to have to accept. Every Nintendo fan and Microsoft fan has had to put up with it. GC flopped (despite being profitable), Xbox 1 was a failure to the tune of $4 billion (despite being loved by the press), it is simply Sony's turn to have a failure and for their fans and backers to accept it.