I think that it is probably making a bit of a profit, but nothing to write home about. As far as its future prospects, the PSP has been making a small comeback recently as far as week to week sales and I expect this trend to continue for this year. It is now 40% of DS sales, and as Home debuts so that PSP users can play w/ Home, and the people start buying more from the playstation store, we will see more money coming back into the PSP for further investment, especially as Sony's gaming becomes more profitable. One way to simply crush the competition is just to spend more on everything (hey it worked for MS more power to em), and the profits that Sony's gaming is starting to generate expect Sony to spend more on the PSP.

 What if you think that if the firmware wasn't hackable it wouldn't of sold nearly as well and would actually be dead around now?

It's piracy has been a positive if you ask me.  It allowed it to gain rapid marketshare by getting cheapass gamers who refuse to buy games to shell out for a handheld system that would usually be out of their price range.

As a multimedia player, the PSP is getting creamed by Apple. Not only on overall sales, but profit margins as well, not to mention content sales. So those who say it's doing great as a multimedia player is looking at the wrong competition. The iPod is the competition in the portable multimedia device market, not the DS.

The PSP is a success for several reasons. One, it is making Sony money. It is also making developers money judging by all the games that will be released this year for it (58). Sure Sony would like more software sales, but where other handhelds really pushing that much software? I know the DS is a software selling beast, but what where the other systems like?

Another reason is that games can be made cheaply for it. You don't have to have a game sell a million units and up to break a profit since games cost less than a million dollars to make. Even if the developers make $10 per game sold, at 100,000 units they made their money back and then some. That is a pretty low threshold to break to turn a profit on a user base of 30+ million.

Obviously the UMD didn't become huge for music or movies, but it must turn enough of a profit for Sony to convince MTV to sign on to release some of there stuff on it. The big thing the UMD did was make a solid platform to put the games on for people to use.

Well piracy is a problem... just not...  download stuff off torrents piracy.  That's wrong but not really hurting the industry.

What hurts the industry is storefront piracy.  Like the stores you can find in some cities that sell burned games and modded consoles out of a storefront... because to some people that legitimizes it... and to others, in other countries you can't even get a system that isn't modded or a game that isn't pirated.

That's the piracy that's causing them trouble.

Really it's all probably a function of media just not being "sold" the right way.

Piracy is basically infringing on a copyright by making a copy of something.  It would be like if the luvre sued you because you copied the Mona Lisa by painting it.

The only difference is that only a few people could paint the Mona Lisa and anyone can copy a file. (except my dad.)

Or Kellogs sueing you for making Rice Krispy Treats instead of buying them in a supermarket.

But since that's how it's set up you need these hypocritical laws in place to protect the makers.

Of course pirating is still wrong because you are hurting the developers who are stuck with the system.

It's much like Ohio.  The way the schools in Ohio are funded ruled illegal.  17 years ago.  Yet they still go through with it because Columbus is too lazy to change the system due to the one time costs it would occur and set back the system a bit.

Hypocricy is basically seen as a better option then the penalties that would occur opon changing it.  Which would likely be less blockbuster games.  Since if you didn't outright sell the games you'd have to sell Ad Space which may or may not generate more money depending on what they used... in game billboards, loading screen adds etc..

Then again it might make em more money in some games.  Wonder how much money would be made off COD4 adds between loading into games. 

 Actually I know that those games where canceled because low software sale and rampant pircay because in every case I read an interview with the developer saying it .... did they lie , and the reason was completly different ? Maybe , but thats what they stated . I check out several PSP sites /day and read mnay interviews . Will I provide you a link ? No , Im to lazy to search for 06 articles :P 

PS : NFS : Carbo actually has a higher rating on Metacritics than MW ( 7.3-7.2 ) so its not because of quality :) 

No, I mean it's easier for the developer to say and use it as a scapegoat. Ever hear a developer quote their "lost profits" from piracy?

They lie right there. What they do is... take every single sale then multiply it buy 50-60 dollars. As if they got the full price of the game and that every pirated copy would translate into a sold copy.

People constantly lie on the overarching effects of piracy because it either benefits them or they are willfully ignorant of it.

To compare however.

Total Software sold for PSP

2005: 11,000,000

2006: 16,000,000

2007: 17,000,000

2008: 4,000,000 so far.

Would seem to suggest 2008 will be a bumper year for PSP sales, likely due to sales blowing up due to the PSP sales blowing up around late 2007.

Christmas quarter being 3/4ths year sales.

This is with, as you put it... less games being announced. There is a big jump from 2005 to 2006 when you claim piracy was most rampant.

 Seems to make sense as a software curve for a system that was considered to be dying for a bit, who likely lost users bitter of UMD and who's system has a lot of multimedia functions.

Looking at the portable gaming as a whole I wouldn´t consider it a success as they are loosing big time and have a hard time moving software but from Sony´s point of view it has to be a great success and the next best thing to actually winning since they managed to get a foothold in the handheld buisness.

PSP entering has to be the best thing happen to the handheld buisness as a whole and would probably need at least one more company so the competition coud get wholesome.

IMO Sony broke the curse that plagued many companies that never had a successfull competing handheld.

You guys are acting as if Sony has sold no games for the system. The system so far has sold 143million software units to retail. This is for for the date ending December 31, 2007. At that point it had sold 69% of GC total software and 64% of the total N64 software. By the time the PSP stops selling it will of passed both those Nintendo systems.