Is PSP dying outside of Japan?

[Malachi]

Darc Requiem said:
PSP software sales have always been horrid outside of Japan. The hardware always sold pretty well until recently. Sony needs to cut the price on the PSP or it's finished.

That not true at all, look at the americain chart and you'll notice that the attach rate is much better than in Japan(that true for all console too), it has about 50 million more games sold there than in Japan with a 5 million bigger userbase. what killed the PSP wasn't piracy like so many wish to believe (like so many wish to believe that DD sale on it is anywhere good) but the lack of third party support from western developer and Sony itself(though it can be excused to have focused on the PS3 when it was in trouble).

It had good support from japenese developer at the beginning and had at least GTA when it come to western franchise. The problem was that almost all the japenese support were niche game in the west except for SE one and that no western one jumped in the bandwagon after the GTA success. The big western developer(EA,Activison,THQ,Take2) don't seem to be interested in handheld at all, they only make game that are attached to a console game(that include the 5m GTA games), except for Ubisoft which milked a few handheld franchise on the DS for a while until people caugth on and stopped buying them.

Then Nintendo started to release their massive seller and the japanese developer who wanted to sell game in the west started to jump ship(SE being the main one) which left Sony with only the like of KOEI as company that supported the PSP more than the DS. Then SONY caugth a break and one of the PSP game became a runaway hit and a system seller, only in Japan however which didn't help in the west. Then the next installement moved to console, not even their, when Capcom wanted to make it big oversea which probably killed any hope for it's ressurection in the west. SONY tried last years with a good deal of marketing even some viral one, finaly a big first party game (GT) and a remodel which actually changed something. It failed though and I really wonder what SONY next move is going to be now.