DISCLAIMER: THIS IS NOT AN ATTACK ON PSP, JUST SOME CONJECTURE ON MY OWN PART
I was just wondering this, for a few reasons. While the PSP is selling respectable hardware numbers (more than any non-Nintendo handheld ever has), it's fairly obvious it's not doing nearly as well overall as Sony (and many others) expected, particularly due to the lack of software sales, as well as general dislike of Sony by a fair chunk of people.
To a lot of people, the PSP has done a few things wrong (I'mnot giving my own opinion, this just seems to be what I'm gathering from the people I've seen talking about PSP):
-Too expensive for a handheld
-Not enough focuson games that can be played in shorter bursts (loading times, and more 'console'-type games)
-Focussed too much on being a media centre, which is why it doesn't sell many games.
So, here is my question:
With the DS currently selling like hotcakes, making PSP's hardware sales look bad and its' software sales practically nonexistent, will Sony come out with a new handheld by the middle of next year, in an attempt to gain the first-mover advantage and force Nintendo to release a new handheld before they are ready (similar to what Microsoft did to the PS3)?
There would be a few advantages to this:
-They would be the only one on the market for a while
-They would obviously make it cheaper, and focus more on selling games, so it would have a better reputation than the PSP by the time Nintendo did get their new handheld out. They'd also likely be able to have a price drop right around the time of DS2.
-If Nintendo was forced to make a new handheld earlier than they wanted, it would cause a serious drop in DS sales (which would likely be at around 95-100 million at the time) and would probably allow Sony to keep the honour of #1-selling game system of all time.
In my opinion, this could give them a chance against Ninty next time. Nintendo would stillbe seenin a much better light than Sony, but they could fare much more respectably imo.
