Even though the Handheld and Home console markets are different, I thought it would be interesting to see how similar market strategies had worked in the different markets at a similar stage in their life.

The Nintendo DS and Wii are very similar in that they both focused on using "outdated" technology in an inovative way, and attempted to appeal to the mainstream consumer with inexpensive hardware and accessable games:

http://vgchartz.com/hwlaunch.php?cons1=Wii&reg1=All&cons2=DS&reg2=All&cons3=Wii&reg3=All&weeks=64

The Sony PSP and PS3 are very similar in that they both focused on having advanced hardware, and focused on multimedia functionality at the expensive of having an unusually expensive system; the games they produced for both systems also focused on the "core" gaming demographic.

http://vgchartz.com/hwlaunch.php?cons1=PS3&reg1=All&cons2=PSP&reg2=All&cons3=PS3&reg3=All&weeks=66

it's a bit surprising to see the psp selling more units than the PS3, but then again it is normal for home consoles to be outsold by portables.

Interesting. But I wonder if those patterns look so similar because these companies tend to release their hardware at the same time of year.

What's scary is that the Wii is trending 40% above the DS. D8

With the PSP and PS3 I was (mainly) thinking that the similar approach of the PSP and PS3 may have worked better for the PSP because consumers had already seen value in the extra features it added; and (somewhat) similar products, like the iPod and PDAs, with similar features already sold for a similar price. The PS3 stands alone in terms of price, and few people have products with similar features so they may not see value in them.

The Wii and DS differences could be caused because the Nintendo DS made the approach much more trusted to both gamers and third party publishers; it could be argued that the Wii had far more games early on because of the success of the Nintendo DS, and many gamers were willing to buy Wii systems because of how much they enjoyed the Nintendo DS.

It is interesting to see how they market their products the same way.
Bit interesting on how Wii sold more than the DS in the same stage of their life
And the PSp outsold the ps3 which i guess is natural b.c a handheld should usually sell better than a console

And is that increase in Ds sales in graph caused by releasing DsL ?
And after that everything is history ;)

Hmm, both consoles started out better than the handhelds.

It should be noted that the PSP releases went septemberish, marchish, septemberish, as opposed to PS3's November 11th, November 17th, March 23rd, which accounts for the PSPs second post launch bumb. However, you would expect something about 1/3 of he price to outsell something 3 times the price. There is also the consideration of people who bought a new PSP slim and lite, after the original, although I don't think there will be too many of them

The PSP's launch price ($250) was considered as outrageous as the PS3's launch price ($500/$600) when you compared it to the Nintendo DS ($150) and GBA ($130).

ps3 had slowest start than psp but now is selling slightly fastest than psp in its second year