lol desperate? I'm not the one in a thread to celebrate something trying to downplay it, now THAT is desperation. Quite sad lil situation too.

success is a very subjectivve matter. For me as an owner of both DS and PSP, I think the psp is miles better than the DS. I like the games on it much better. We do not know what the companies wanted from their products from get go. Will they gun for the top? Obviously, otherwise that would just horrible business goal setting there. But I have yet to see Sony showing any signs of dissapointment in their product. And many people will agree, psp has been a great success story. Just because one is more successful doesn't mean the other isn't, there are varying degrees to such a thing. DS for example has been a phenomenal success! calling it a great success is undermining it imho even if I don't like the device as much.

Wii is a horrible gen leader, truly weak compared to previous gens. It's getting slapped around in sales even by the weakening psp! game support is nil atm. 3rd party support is non existent other than for carnival and dance games almost. it's very weak compared to the specs of the competition. Online is a laughable compared psn/xbl. So if I make a metric of judging success compared to previous leaders then I would call it a failure as well. See I can make up my own metrics too ya know. But reality is it's a success. It sold really well, brought lots of money for ninty and help them enter a market that wasn't tapped to such an extent before.

No one is sugar coating anything here, it was a great success, it's still doing well and doesn't depend on people discovering the 'magic' in it. Great games, great sales, market share, yep it's a great lil success story :) move along now

The PSP was pretty much the first real competitor to Nintendo in the handheld market. The Game Gear and Wonderswan didn't come close by a long shot. And the PSP managed to beat the DS head-to-head during several periods in Japan. They've been beating the DS for the past four months as well and beating the 3DS for a couple months.

Like psrock I feel that the PSP didn't meet it's full potential. Specifically outside Japan. Sony and the western third-parties focused way too much on creating home console experiences on the go. And while this strategy did work to some extent (ie. GTA Liberty City Stories and Vice City Stories, God of War Chains of Olympus), this strategy didn't work out too well overall. Sure the PSP had some hits but if we're looking at overall hardware and software sales, the DS was kicking their ass big time outside Japan. And later on in the PSP's lifespan people started caring less about these kind of experiences on the go (see: Ghost of Sparta selling a lot less than Chains of Olympus).

Sony really need to take a different direction with the NGP. But instead it looks like they're continuing to focus on making home console games to go with the NGP. Operating business as usual is not going to improve Sony's position outside Japan. They need to focus more on pick up and play type of games. The type of games that made the DS a major success. So as long as Uncharted Portable and the other home console-style games can make a profit, they're fine to have around. But Sony and the third-parties need to focus more on the pick up and play stuff to undercut Nintendo (who seem more interested in catering to the Nintendo hardcore lately than the mass market) and stay competitive with the smart devices (iOS/Android and to a lesser extent Windows Mobile 7).

I think the PSP is quite a sucess. It has sold more than all but 6 systems ever made. It offers a great library of quality games at very cheap prices now days (many are cheaper than $9.99 used). The system itself is now only $129 new. And is presently a very functional device for 2004 technology.

I think the PSP2 may be the best system for core gamers yet! (I has high hopes O.O )

I think its just a blue ocean strategy; Besides PSP, where else in the market can you get home console quality games on a portable?

If Sony had gone Red Ocean Head to head with Nintendo they would have been slaughtered, Sony has managed to carve a rather large niche that no on else is contending for; its a pretty solid strategy and has garnered them well over 60mil units sold for their effort.

Reality of the situation is, 7th highest console sales of all time (4th counting only handheld consoles) is not to shabby for a first attempt. I expect the PSP2 to do higher lifetime sales.

Selling 70 million just by itself doesn't necessarily imply success. It's just another number. It's utterly meaningless without perspective. I choose to view it from the perspective of past performances, you don't.

Making attacks at consoles I like when we're arguing about the PSP's success, or lack thereof, rather than countering my arguments really seems desperate to me, though, again, I suppose that's subjective. That "discovering the 'magic'" part really appeared to be a cheap shot to me.

And I'm really not trying to downplay it. I'm just stating another point of view on the subject that would otherwise go ignored in this kind of thread. I can't fathom why you can't accept that there's plenty of room to argue that it's not a success because it didn't fulfill long term expectations or live up to past franchise performance. I never denied that there's lots to say that it is one.

70 million hardware, 300 million software

Huge success !!!!

wait if comparing a handheld to other handhelds and adding in consoles and claiming its a success? then what do you call a ps3 a failure? a 360 a failure? now lets look at its competition and see if its a success or failure. the DS sold how many millions? more then ps2? but wait if you call psp a success compared to DS then the gamecube was  a success compared to ps2. see how that sounds?? it just doesnt work sorry. psp for handhelds held their own but yet even nintendo's lowest selling handheld still outsold it and that was just in a few years. 

Im not going to bash sony for releasing a handheld but in my eyes psp was a failure compared to any nintendo handheld that was on the market. even the 3DS is selling as much or more then the psp. and it doesnt have the games as the psp does. i just cant say psp is a success at all. not to mention the many systems having to get rebought cause of damaged or malfunctioning systems.

To be honest when the PSP launched in 2005 I never seriously considered getting one. It was expensive, there weren't many great games for it, it was too big to be a "real" portable. And Sony was really arrogant. When people call the PSP a flop they can always go out and quote the things Sony said in 2004 ("getting out of the handheld ghetto" and such).

But over the years the PSP has gotten more and more interesting to me.

One thing Sony does way way better than Nintendo is giving late adopters the feeling of buying something amazing. I bought a PS2 when it was cheap and had a great budget line of games and I did the same with the PSP. There are tons of truly great games you can get for less than 10 bucks. Ratchet and Clank, God of War, Patapon, Wipeout... it's just amazing. Compare this to Nintendo's budget line of games (which basically consists of titles with low development costs the market rejected) to get a better picture.

And despite people complaining about download titles I totally appreciate Sony's move to release their games as downloads and on physical media with the NGP.

Here's hoping the NGP will be just as great a platform as the PSP is right now. We shouldn't let the PSP's current success fool us, though: For the first two years the NGP will be expensive and developers will take some time to realize the full potential of the platform.

I never expected Sony to do such a good job back when that thing launched

it got outsold 2 or even 3 to 1. nintendo didnt change its gameplan sony had to. the psp to me is a big failure if it was to challenge nintendo in the market it had to sell easily 100 million minimum