PSP-Go (30,000 First Week Sales) A Flop ?

[Reasonable]

WereKitten said:

Reasonable said:
Nope. Not a flop. People need to go back and look at pre-launch statements - 'premium priced new model for early adopters' being the key one.

The Go! was priced to start fairly muted to only those willing to pay it's hefty price tag to get a digital distribution based PSP vs a regular PSP.

Still, watch for lots of people comparing it to the Slim launch, completely incorrectly but just because it seems so tempting to do so.

I agree and I'd add another few things: every single PSP Go that is sold instead of a PSP 3000 brings

- higher revenue from software licenses and first party games in the long run, because of the nonexistent second hand market

- more credit with third parties about the viability of the digital distribution model and its implementation by Sony

I think those are actually more important than the revenue coming from selling the hardware itself at a premium. They also make much more sense on an optionally premium model than for a total replacement of the PSP line.

Yeah, I agree.  Good points.  I'm sure Sony will be watching the actual SW sales with more interest than the HW, and probably looking at how many digital purchases were made by people with regular PSP vs a Go!

I'm curious to see how opinion starts to settle once a feel for the Go! settles down.

I see a lot of people saying they want digitial distrbution, then see those same people go on about how much they like second hand titles, using Ebay, etc.

With the Go! we get a taste of the implications of a full digitial model, where a purchase is recorded and there is no option to re-sell, get second hand, etc. apart from piracy.

Mind you, if I was Sony, I'd explore if there was some way to allow people to 'pass on' or transfer games to friends, taking a small cut for the privilage.  So say I buy GoW on PSP, play it, then transfer it to you.  Sony cancels my 'ownership' of the title, gives you ownership, and takes a small fee, nominally for the re-sale of the title to you.  In reality, they'd be making money for nothing.  Sure, they lose your full price purchase, in reality, they'd more likely end up generating more addition second hand purchases or pass-on's than they'd lose.

Not sure about legal implications, as with digitial there is no 'second hand' copy - you'd be accessing the same GoW files on PSN as a full price purchaser, but I'm sure they could do it via transfer of ownership.