Weakened economy is addressed above. The video game market seems to thrive regardless of the economic state of the country. The high seller games are clearly demonstrated with the weekly sales analysis. The exact same thing happens everytime. There is a spike followed by a taperign off until it returns to normal sales. The fact is the sales of the PSP were stable at 60k a week for months before the second Monster Hunter game was released on the platform. Are you seriously arguing that the sales of the PSP would have gone down but Monster Hunter magically managed to sustain them at the exact same rate as they were before?

 That is really interesting. I wish I had access to the data that would show any connection between the two. If it is selling at a sustained 30k a week then it would be fairly good evidence that it is one of the primary factors.

Oh, absolutely, you can't prove against it either, since there's no way you can distinguish between "redesign sales boost" with "prolong software boost"

I can quote Halo 3 effect. which thrust xbox into a new hardware high, and the effect can even be felt (arguable) even today. And why I put Halo 3 in the same sentence as MH??? Because if you can name another game from PSP that is still selling top 20 after 14 weeks. Let me know.

Base on that, MH is doing to PSP what Halo did to 360.

Why is it impossible to distinguish between redesign sales boost and Monster Hunter 2G sales boost? PSP slim was released in September of 2007. Since then it has sustained an average weekly sales of 60k outside of the holiday season. In recent weeks it has again continued to sell at a sustained 60k a week.

Monster Hunter selling in the top 20 is not really relevant to that point. There is a chance that there should have been a drop off that would have happened exactly when Monster Hunter 2G was released and that it has managed to counteract that effect by exactly the number of people that would have stopped buying the system. I am going to stick with Occam's razor though and say it was due to the redesign. There is also the fact that the DS lite did the exact same thing for the DS to strengthen my arguement.

Why is it impossible to distinguish something? Because you are simply ignoring every other factors out there. Occam's razor explains scientific speculations, not market penentration.

Well only a complete retard ... or my cousin , could believe that one game can push a system for long . The PSP had many good moves since the middle of last year .

First there was a pricedrop everywhere . That helped the PSP to finally get out of the extremly low sales everywhere .

Then came the redesign in Japan with Crisis Core . But not just Crisis Core . Japanese developers knew that this two factors ( redesign and CC ) will help PSP sales so many published small , but fanbase-heavy games . Also there where some other fairly big titles like MPO+ .

Thn after heaving a stellar 3 year run and extreme Q4 sales in 07 the DS finally reached a point in Japan where it just couldent sell the 100k+ units in an avarege week as it did before . The PSP was cheap , it had a handful of quality games , it went trough a redesign and it was a handheld ( it seems Japan shore loves handhelds ) so it took over the crown . But then came MHP2G ... it was huge , no doubt about it , and anyone who says diferent is an idiot at best . It did help sales and it still does . I bet my head that if the game wouldent have come out PSP sales would be 10k lower at least / week .

But then we have to take in consideration other games to . Its true we just cant atribute the sales-spike to one game . But its enought to loook at the charts : from Pro Evo Soccer 08 to Star Ocean 2 , there where ~ 10 games that all passed the 100k mark or sold in the region . Yes bealive it or not those games help a lot .

Will the winning streak end here ? Well seeing that this month the PSP is getting another Gundam game and a Phantsay Star port I would say that we will see the PSP in the top of the charts potentially all summer ;)