| Sullla said: The best way to describe the PSP is a modest success that fell far, far short of Sony's expectations. The goal with the PSP was not to "break into" the handheld market and get creamed by the DS. Sony created the PSP to destroy Nintendo's dominance in portables, with the intention of driving Nintendo out of business. Remember, this was back in 2004, the height of Sony's domination of the gaming market. The PS2 was destroying all comers, and the GBA was seen as the last bastion of hope for Nintendo, which Sony was going to sweep away just as they had taken over the console market. The PSP had ALL of the third party support, extensive multimedia capabilities, and Sony was able to leverage their motion picture division into releasing movies on the platform too! Every analyst thought it was over for the DS, which would be steamrolled with ease. So you have to keep some of those expectations in mind when evaluating the relative success or failure of the PSP. I seriously doubt that Sony would have been happy with the current situation of the PSP, if you had told them where they would be four years down the road. Neither would the Sony fans of four years ago. When you spin things around and make statements like "of course the PSP is a success, no one ever beats Nintendo handhelds", you're reading history backwards from the perspective of the present. That doesn't mean the PSP was a failure either; it's just been a very modest success. In no way has it come anywhere close to the goals it was supposed to achieve. Saying that the PSP must be a success because it turned a profit is a little like saying the Gamecube was a success because it also turned a profit. True in one sense, while missing the larger point. |
This makes a lot of sense. It's actually kind of funny--replace Sony with Microsoft in that post and Nintendo with Sony, and you've got the sixth generation of consoles 
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Yeah, I'd consider the PSP a success, in the same way that you might have considered the original Xbox a success--it successfully established itself in a monopolized market. There are differences, however--the original Xbox had a respectable attach rate. While the PSP does in fact have a quality games lineup now, people aren't buying it (with few exceptions).
Let me put it this way: If the PSP was as successful as Sony (and everyone) predicted, Nintendo would very likely be out of the video game market right now, as the DS was all that held them together for the last year of the GameCube's life.
