Sony: PSP2 will be a download-only!!!

[joeorc]

superchunk said:

raygun said:
Look at other download only platforms like the Iphone, and it's app store, and itunes. Yes, download only does work.

However, its a product that costs $500 stand alone and $200 with a contract and serves a different primary purpose.

Sony can't sell their products with contracts and people, as already proven, won't buy a portable product in the scale of an iPhone or DS if it costs much more than $200.

In order for Sony to make retailers want to use the space for a digital content only device and potentially add a kiosk as someone else mentioned, the device must be able to make adequate profit for the retailer. That's what the games and accessories did previously.

If the games are only on the PSN, then the retialer is better off supporting the 3DS (assuming it takes game disks) and putting very little support behind the PSP2.

So, Sony would be forced to make sure the margin is decent as well as make a little profit for themselves. Then based on these rumors it would seem the PSP2 will be priced relatively high, thus repeating their relative failurs on the PSP and PS3. (I say relative as in the end both are/will be profitable ventures, however they both lost by a large margin to Nintendo in market share and units sold)

they could if the direction they changed to is not what some are expecting:

Xperia X10 Quickly Becomes NTT DoCoMo’s Top-Selling Smartphone

by Kevin Krause on May 14th, 2010

Let’s face it: no one was all the impressed with the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10. No multi-touch, Android 1.6, and interface issues all seemed to add up to an all around sad Android from SE. Then again, apparently no one in Japan reads Android blogs, as Barclay Capital is reporting that the X10 — known simply as the Xperia in the Land of the Rising Sun — has become the fastest selling smartphone on the Japanese carrier NTT DoCoMo. The X10 racked up an impressive 120,000 handsets sold in the first three weeks after its April launch.

This sales rate topped an unspecified HTC Android phone that only moved 80,000 units in the 10 months since its launch on DoCoMo, and even bested the figures of the 32GB iPhone 3GS (though we will assume it didn’t quite overtake the combined sales with the 16GB model).

Regardless, the X10 is in high-demand, with its first few shipments selling out quickly and more on the way. Now just imagine if Sony Ericsson released a killer Android 2.1+ device in the Japanese market…sheer pandemonium!

Android: [check]

"We took a very sophisticated PlayStation middleware and shrunk it to fit the Android OS": [playstation portable function added to android check]

Playstation portable new direction?[ ]

I think its a very strong trend that this may be the "new psp2"