No, Carl. Now you just want to convince yourself that the PSV isn't in big trouble. While you can say that price wasn't the 3DS's main problem, it was a significant problem nonetheless.

Nintendo launched the 3DS later than planned. They actually wanted to get the thing out before the end of 2010, at the very least in Japan, but probably also in America. They had to delay it, because they couldn't produce enough units in time (although as we know in hindsight, they wouldn't have needed that many units to begin with).

I am quite sure the PSP had a base package everywhere in the world, selling for $200. This was during the peak of the PlayStation brand, so Sony had an easier time to get away with charging a high price. Regardless, the PSP's sales in the first couple of years weren't all that impressive which is why the price needed to be cut despite original GTA, MGS and FF titles on the system. And you know that GTA was the biggest thing back then, released in October or November 2005. Big games alone couldn't do the job, the price was still too high for more widespread success, so I don't see how big games alone could do the trick for the PSV.

No, Carl. Now you just want to convince yourself that the PSV isn't in big trouble. While you can say that price wasn't the 3DS's main problem, it was a significant problem nonetheless.

Nintendo launched the 3DS later than planned. They actually wanted to get the thing out before the end of 2010, at the very least in Japan, but probably also in America. They had to delay it, because they couldn't produce enough units in time (although as we know in hindsight, they wouldn't have needed that many units to begin with).

I am quite sure the PSP had a base package everywhere in the world, selling for $200. This was during the peak of the PlayStation brand, so Sony had an easier time to get away with charging a high price. Regardless, the PSP's sales in the first couple of years weren't all that impressive which is why the price needed to be cut despite original GTA, MGS and FF titles on the system. And you know that GTA was the biggest thing back then, released in October or November 2005. Big games alone couldn't do the job, the price was still too high for more widespread success, so I don't see how big games alone could do the trick for the PSV.

No, Carl. Now you just want to convince yourself that the PSV isn't in big trouble. While you can say that price wasn't the 3DS's main problem, it was a significant problem nonetheless.

Nintendo launched the 3DS later than planned. They actually wanted to get the thing out before the end of 2010, at the very least in Japan, but probably also in America. They had to delay it, because they couldn't produce enough units in time (although as we know in hindsight, they wouldn't have needed that many units to begin with).

I am quite sure the PSP had a base package everywhere in the world, selling for $200. This was during the peak of the PlayStation brand, so Sony had an easier time to get away with charging a high price. Regardless, the PSP's sales in the first couple of years weren't all that impressive which is why the price needed to be cut despite original GTA, MGS and FF titles on the system. And you know that GTA was the biggest thing back then, released in October or November 2005. Big games alone couldn't do the job, the price was still too high for more widespread success, so I don't see how big games alone could do the trick for the PSV.

No, Carl. Now you just want to convince yourself that the PSV isn't in big trouble. While you can say that price wasn't the 3DS's main problem, it was a significant problem nonetheless.

Nintendo launched the 3DS later than planned. They actually wanted to get the thing out before the end of 2010, at the very least in Japan, but probably also in America. They had to delay it, because they couldn't produce enough units in time (although as we know in hindsight, they wouldn't have needed that many units to begin with).

I am quite sure the PSP had a base package everywhere in the world, selling for $200. This was during the peak of the PlayStation brand, so Sony had an easier time to get away with charging a high price. Regardless, the PSP's sales in the first couple of years weren't all that impressive which is why the price needed to be cut despite original GTA, MGS and FF titles on the system. And you know that GTA was the biggest thing back then, released in October or November 2005. Big games alone couldn't do the job, the price was still too high for more widespread success, so I don't see how big games alone could do the trick for the PSV.

Oh, he's just like the average gamer then. I like it

No, 13 year olds need babysitting. He clearly doesn't

Of course lowering the price alone won't help, because it didn't solve all the 3DS's problems either. My point is that both, games and price cut, need to happen in order to turn things around. Not just one or the other.

@DemoniOtaku

For clarification, I wasn't saying that the PSP wasn't successful at all, I was saying that the PSP at a price above $200 wasn't. People at large aren't going to pay $250+ when they can get a home console for the same price or less. Maybe they would, if the 3DS and PSV were launched at the same time as the eighth generation home consoles, but that's still a big maybe.

Um, yeah. The logical conclusion would be that a gamer buys the desktop, especially if the games library is equal. So the laptop loses out. You know what device the laptop in this analogy is.

Alright, I'll tell you in late April/early May then.

I think we've gone over this before, how desperate Nintendo was for third party support and all that. Getting a huge headstart seemed to be the easiest way for them, so they went with it. I can't find anything anymore about an intended late 2010 launch, so I was probably mixing up calendar and fiscal year. The 3DS eventually did launch worldwide in the planned fiscal year as we know. It's also possible that I was just thinking of an explanation by Nintendo why they didn't launch the 3DS during the holiday season 2010 and that's where this "because of too low supply" is coming from.

20 million PSPs is about right. I also looked into the pricing issue. Japan was the only country to receive a core model at launch, going for 20,000 yen (which basically is $200). America got it in March 2006, so approximately one year after the PSP launch. Europe also got it in March 2006, about half a year after launch. VGC has the PSP at 9.6m for 2005 and 9.5m for 2006 (2004, Japan only would be 0.5m). So basically Sony had to react with cheaper models in early 2006 to keep PSP hardware sales stable for the year, despite an obviously better overall games library than in 2005. The original $250 price point simply wasn't sustainable and the PSV is actually more expensive than that.

That certainly played a big part, that they wanted to get out a new hot product to counter falling stock prices. But there's of course also the fact that they wanted to give third parties more space to be successful on the system in order to avoid the usual situation of "only Nintendo games sell on Nintendo systems". This coupled with the assumption that these third party games in question would sustain an acceptable level of hardware sales until the holidays when Nintendo would release their own big guns, so there was no contingency plan in place.

If you just want to argue for the sake of arguing, then I am out. I can wait. Time makes more converts than reason, so once you see that the PSV can't become successful without a price cut, you'll be more willing to listen.