Should Sony Abandon the PSP?, or You Can't Spell Ignorant without...

[johnsobas]

HappySqurriel said:

nitekrawler1285 said:

deathgod33 said:

raygun said:
Well, they only sold 500,000 of them LAST WEEK ALONE, and there's 55 million of them sold SO FAR, why in the hell would someone think it's a failure?

DS sales completely rape them. and besides, i think we can all agree that Nintendo makes the best handhelds and that job should remain solely with them.

Even if the DS sales rape the PSP it has been a profitable venture for Sony unlike the PS3.  Diversity in the  market is a great thing for consumers. Some people have different  tastes.  One could argue that the situation should be in reverse. Dump the hemoraghing system and focus on making the profitable one better and more appealing.

The real question is has it been a profitable venture for Sony?

Software has never really sold particularly well on the PSP even though it was more expensive to develop this software (than Nintendo DS or previous handheld software); and the hardware was (potentially) sold at a loss early on, with very large initial R&D costs (with more than modest ongoing R&D costs from the constant hardware revisions).

I'm not saying it has been a disaster for Sony, but I doubt many people would measure it as much of a success (in console terms) when you are looking at profit.

yeah it probably wasn't a whole lot of profit, but it was also their first handheld system, Sony established themselves and are in decent position going into next gen.  Compare that to the PS3 where they lost billions of dollars and huge chunks of marketshare.