kber81 said: BTW this is first Sony's incarnation on the handheld market and it's more successful than original GB - it means something. 2006 was much better than it's predecessor. This year will keep this positive trend too.

To say it's more successful then the original GB is a huge misconception. Week for week comparisons it is higher by a tiny percentage. But the GB success did not come in this point in it's life. If you look at it on a chart the things sales kept going up year after year, until 9 years in pokemon hits the pocket edition hits and its selling hundreds of thousands of units, hitting crazy numbers a decade after it launches. So it's success is not at all based on its moderate early years on the market, so to say the psp is more successful is to assume it too will have some insane uprising of sales seven years from now. And I don't think anyone sees that happening. The best the psp can hope to sell is 40% of the original gb userbase. Maybe it can possibly hit 50% of it. 50% would equal 57.5 million units.

2006 wasn't better either at least for unit sales in Japan. Take a look:

• 2005: 2.2 million units sold
• 2006: 1.9 milllion units sold

As for the DS for the sake of comparison:

• 2005: 4.2 million units sold
• 2006: 8.4 million units sold

Although with that said based on the already 740,000 sold this year I'd be surprised if it doesn't do better in Japan in 2007. And actually 1.9 million isn't too bad being that it's competition doubled in sales you'd think they'd have taken a bigger hit then that.

fooflexible said: To say it's more successful then the original GB is a huge misconception.

 Yes, you are right. Here goes a rectification - PSP is more successful than original GB as for now  

fooflexible said: kber81 said: BTW this is first Sony's incarnation on the handheld market and it's more successful than original GB - it means something. 2006 was much better than it's predecessor. This year will keep this positive trend too. To say it's more successful then the original GB is a huge misconception. Week for week comparisons it is higher by a tiny percentage. But the GB success did not come in this point in it's life. If you look at it on a chart the things sales kept going up year after year, until 9 years in pokemon hits the pocket edition hits and its selling hundreds of thousands of units, hitting crazy numbers a decade after it launches. So it's success is not at all based on its moderate early years on the market, so to say the psp is more successful is to assume it too will have some insane uprising of sales seven years from now. And I don't think anyone sees that happening. The best the psp can hope to sell is 40% of the original gb userbase. Maybe it can possibly hit 50% of it. 50% would equal 57.5 million units.

I agree to a certain degree, but what is the difference is....can you see both Nintendo and Sony leaving their handhelds alone in the market place without a significant upgrade for another 5 or 6 years?   I don't!

I would be very surprised though if the PSP got near 57m units in it's lifespan.  I reckon it will bet closer to 40m. 

Thank you! Anyway just wanted to say despite my comments I still think the psp has done well, 20 million so far is not at all bad. And as i've said above despite the insane growth of the DS the Psp has been able to hold it's ground. Proving if anything there is definitly room for more then one handheld on the market. Too many people think if a system isn't beating every other system it isn't successful and that's just not the case. What I'm wondering is, what the next-gen of handhelds will be. I think that'll even be more interesting then the home console battle, because I'd be shocked if Sony didn't at touch screen support, which mean Nintendo has to push something new, and I'd be surprised if a third handheld didn't enter the market. And I'm seriously thinking Apple will do it, it's the next logical step for them they have music/video/phone they now need games if they are going to expand their market share. Microsoft may even make an attempt to push the Zune further, so it will be interesting.

The DS has outsold the PSP in Japan 2:1 at least since it's release.

But, this year I think the PSP will have a better year all round the world, although it won't have a hope in hell of catching the DS.

This year so far, the PSP has sold more than 100k more units in the same period last year.  So far it's sold 740k in Japan, which is pretty healthy considering.  I reckon the PSP will sell around 2-2.5m units in Japan this year.