I think the question is "what did you expect?" Just because Sony came in, and took the console market from Nintendo, I don't believe the handheld market is the same. As you said, I believe the #1 reason is price. Although it's a great value at $200 or the new price tag of $170, it's still friggin' expensive for a portable gaming device (regardless of extra abilities). I believe Kwaad showed a random poll awhile ago, showing that if the NDS and PSP were the same price, about 50% of people would buy a PSP vs. a DS - a stark contrast from where it is now (it's around 2:1 or so). Games like Vice City Stories and LC Stories did fantastic on PSP. MHP2 in Japan is the highest selling game of the year. It proves that games on PSP can do fantastic. The big question is when are devs going to really mean business? FFT should end up around 400k units in Japan when everything is said and done. IMO, if the PSP wanted to gain some ground vs. the DS (not that it could ever win) they should: #1. Lower the price to no more than $150, or a comparible rate worldwide. #2. Develop more unique titles, and exclusives such as God of War (coming out), Gran Turismo, and other major titles. With the PS3 floundering, PSP sales could give Sony a much-needed boost if they played it smart. #3. Stop advertising it to the 13-17 y/o crowd. Try to explain it's obviously superior multimedia features and abilities instead of just one crowd, it's obnoxious. #4. Coerce new developers via great middleware to port their games to PSP, or create new games on the platform. IMO, you can do so much with the platform if the devs cared (which most don't). If Sony could offer some sort of special abilities to port very good games (like Kingdom Hearts, FFXII, ect) over, it could do really well. Not that Sony really would do it. The PSP could easily sell 50-60m units w/w before it releases a 2nd PSP. However, it will have a hard time when there are no games for it. MHP2 showed that there are TONS of people that'd buy a PSP if there was any relevant software for the system. There is none of that software outside of porn. Sony needs to up the ante, and even consider making a next series title on the PSP exclusively.
Back from the dead, I'm afraid.
