Poll: Is the PSP Go a failure (saleswise)?

[saicho]

mario64 said:

smbu2000 said:

dunno001 said:
I'm more interested in watching the DSLite sales to the PSPGo. A DS that is 2 models older than the newest one is outselling the Go 4:1 this (and the past few) week. I really think that Sony's trying to spin this however they can publically, but internally, it's being referred to as a failure.

Amazingly the DS Lite is still at it's original launch price of 16,800 yen.(which is also the current price of the psp 3000). The DS Lite never had a price drop in Japan like it did in the West.

I'm surprised it's still selling so many units as it's only 2000 yen more to get a DSi.

 

The thing is it has nothing to do with the PSP. Comparing PSP sales to DS sales makes as much sense as comparing Wii sales to 360/PS3 sales, which is... not much.

One (DS / Wii) is mostly bought and played by casual players like my grandmother or my 5 year old nephews who know nothing about traditional video games, FPS, RPG and so on, while the other one (PSP / PS3 / 360) is aimed a traditional gamers who love FPS / RPG/ adventure games and don't care about waving their arms or dancing in front of their TV.

Now there ARE hardcore gamers and games on DS and Wii, but it's clearly not the target of those consoles. The big majority of DS / Wii owners are casual gamers. The two crowds don't mix well at all.

It's like comparing apples and oranges actually. Of course, casual gamers are more numerous...

There were more than 50 million PSP sold in the world, this is a huge success, even more considering the target customer was the core gamer.

The Go itself didn't sell a lot, but it's an expensive premium product, so expectations were very low. On the other hand, it helped sell more traditional PSP too and PS3s, like Bravia TVs do or any other advanced technological product by Sony.

What's the proof of this? It certainly doesn't help sell more PSP 3000s since the sale of PSP has dropped comparing to last year.

As for "selling above expectation is not a spin", the initial shipment for PSP Go in Japan is 150K units and it has sold 64.4K so far (based on OP). Was Sony really expecting to sell out its first shipment of PSP Go after more than 6 months it launched which includes the Christmas-New Year, the busiest shopping season in Japan? Maybe it's the retailer's fault to order that many units of PSP Go and Sony only expected it to sell 50K.