I think you are contradicting yourself

When there is such a big lack of software for the PSP, why are millions of pirated games downloaded from internet sites? You cannot pirate games that are not there.

In the end the PSP is a pretty successful device, its the first(I think) hand-held seriously challenging Nintendo although it possibly didn't have the success people were expecting when it launched.

1st atempt at a handheld , excellent hardware , 33 million install base.

that sounds somewhat like success.

I don't have a PSP, but I'll give credit where credit is due. The PSP is a success.

Slightly different than the xbox in that it actually makes Sony money, where the xbox 1 was a money hole with the hope of turning a profit with the 360.  The other thing is that Sony had the very successful playstation brand where xbox brand was unknown at the time.  I feel like management make a couple of wrong turns and it could have been more successful, but this kind of competition with Nintendo in the handheld market is unheard of.  So it would be hard to not classify it as a success.

well it's did pretty decent, certainly far from a failure. They haven't lost money on the PSP, and they have a pretty good userbase, that's the plus side of things.

The bad side is that they aren't selling very much software at all, and if you compare it to the DS it is getting been trounced worldwide in hardware and software sales. Even if you use attach rates the DS software sales are way better.

It was Sony's first try at it though so i think it's done pretty well if you take that into consideration.

Since this was a market that Sony had never been into before i would agree with people saying that it was a success! I mean the PSP is the greatest competition Ninty has ever had in the handheld market.

The PSP2 (assuming there is one) will no doubt address the issues brought up with the PSP and then some :D

 Piarting games for the PSP is easy ... true , but the software being crap is such an old story . It could be used to a certain degree in mid 06 , but we are now in 08 . Just open your eyes , and youl see that there is much more to the PSP than Fifa :)

Was it a filure ? No it was a success . Was it a huge success that killed out Nintendo from the market , as many where expecting ? No it wasnt , but it was pretty much stupid to expect it . The PSP makes at this point a pretty decent ammount of money for Sony , especially hardware wise , and seeing that an averege PSP games creation costs ~ 500k $ , I seriously bealive that many companys are making money even from software sales . Capcom , Square-Enix , EA , Konami , Namco-Bandai  and Sony itself :) Its far from beeing a software pusher , and its obvious that hardware sales generat 90% of the profit , but no , its not a failure :)

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.

It is very successful maybe the software isn't doing that good but the hardware sales are doing awesome.

no, it passed. 4th best selling handheld all time, best selling "non-nintendo" handheld of all time.

Also take into consideration that its Sony's first entry to the handheld market, mind you the playstation name was strong from PS1 and PS2.

Of course it hasn't done that great compared to Game Boy, but solid. Plus your acting like its done selling now, and we have to decide this moment if it phailed or passed. Its still selling over 100,000 a week...in JAPAN! So i wouldn't be surprised if it reached 50+ million lifetime.