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z64dan said:
22 million people decided on the PSP

I said:
Some of those 22 million may have bought both the PSP and the DS

You said:
Perhaps those 22 million wouldn't consider buying the DS (hence they bought the PSP)

Isn't what you said pretty much what z64dan said?

I'm confused... 

Well. I think you can pretty much add all of the PSP sales into a "Money Spent on Gaming" category. Since money is finite, Nintendo did not get THAT money, definitely. They would have had a much higher chance of getting any of that money, if people weren't already buying a PSP.

Well I agree that they didn't get that money, but the handheld market doubled in size since the GBA era, so they are getting much more money than ever.  You can probably thank the PSP partially for market expansion, as many people (myself included) felt it necessary to own both.  Either way though Nintendo could care less about the PSP, in fact they should be shaking Sony's hand and saying "Thanks for making us more money than last gen! Oh and thanks for the PS3 too, man you have no idea what that system has done for Wii sales."

Again, not a failure, but not hurting Nintendo.

I see many comments such as "no one has taken this much of the gameboy's market share" and "no one has stayed in the race this long," but to be honest, that is one of the most insignificant factors in this discussion (in my opinion.) Obviously, when you go to this sites homepage, you see the PSP's bar is basically half of the DS's, and hey that's actually pretty good against the Nintendo dominated handheld market. But the only significance hardware sales has is a factor in this equation:

Hardware sales + X = Software sales (profit)

More often than not, Hardware sales is the most important factor in that equation, so typically, hardware sales and the final out come (software sales) coincide with each other. But for the PSP, factor X is throwing off the equation darastically. Factor X is the homebrew, multimedia, piracy, emulation aspect of the PSP which is clearly over powering the equation and preventing the software sales from being where they should be. So while Hardware sales are quite impressive, the most important factor (in my opinion) is software sales, which is no where near where it should be. The only significance (in my opinion) that hardware sales presents is the install base for the system, and the install base presents a higher potential of consumers to buy games. If they aren't buying the games, then that negates any merit the hardware sales have in regards to a system being a success.

Which is part of the success:  expanding the market.

I've owned a NES, SNES, Genesis, PS1, PS2, and PS3, but the first portable I've owned is the PSP.

Success.

Did it outsell Nintendo handhelds? no.
Did outsell all previous handhelds competing against Nintendo handhelds? YES.
Did it make Sony and profit and get them a good foothold in the handheld market? YES.

Sony did a great job overall. The PSP is a pretty nice piece of hardware and has a decent library. Best of all it also helped Sony regain some of its lost walkman market from the ipod, granted very little, but the media features of the PSP are a major selling point for a lot of people. I would say much more than the Bluray player is on the PS3.

All in all it has sold very well comparatively speaking and is a profitable venture for Sony. Thus, a success. QED.

The real problem with the PSP is its horrible game library. When I went to shop for a handheld I was hard pressed to find 2 games I really wanted for the system. Obviously I never purchased a handheld although the DS came close to making a sale since they had a better game lineup in my eyes.

If I wanted to get a handheld now the only thing that would make them worthwhile is homebrew stuff in which case I would lean towards the PSP however I would probably never purchase any PSP games save for Lumines depending on the version of PSP i end up with.

UMD movies failed because no one is going to buy a movie that will only play on a PSP when a DVD can play on almost anything. The only person who may even consider UMD's is someone who is away from their home often enough that they cant watch them at home and they dont own a laptop. That market is small and no improvements to the PSP will ever change that. The only way to make UMD's take off is make them <= $5 a piece including new releases that way it becomes an impulse buy even for kids. Otherwise anyone with half a brain could have told you they would fail from the start.

The PSP's game library isn't bad at all if you like shooters, racers, and sports games. It has some really great little gems too, you unfortunately have to sort of dig for them though, as they are covered by crap. In fact, some of the best PSP games never even get shelf space in major stores, which is unfortunate :(. I like my PSP, but I really do wish there were more games on it.

The PSP isn't the joke that people were making it out to be a few months back. It's got some solid software for it. I'd have to day there are games on both the DS and the PSP that I'd give a try but I'm not a portable gamer. I just would never play games on the go. If I'm out, I'm usually off to a destination, short on time, and not thinking about video games. Portables are for kids in my opinion. Unless they ever made DotA portable. I would be in heaven.

I think another often cited but little proven "fact" of the PSP's "success" is the notion that Sony is making a profit on the PSP. I have yet to ever see this being the case and in fact hear stories to the contrary, as poor game sales and loss leader strategies combined with the PS3's failure to take off led to their recent Games Division loss.

A list of consoles the PSP has outsold is cute, but unfortunately irrelevant. His competition is the DS and the DS is eating his lunch. It doesn't matter if he outsold the Xbox or Gamecube, which are in three-way competitions (four-way if you count DC) in totally different market dynamics. He's running the 100 yard dash, nobody cares if he ran faster than some of the hurlders.

Just the fact that this topic EXISTS shows that there is some insecurity about whether the PSP is a success. You can't make this topic about the DS and come away sane. The "taking marketshare" idea is also somewhat suspect considering that the DS is selling much faster than its predecessor (even to the point of besting the PS2 in Japan soon), which means Nintendo's market is actually quite unaffected. Nintendo expanded their own market, while the PSP gets marketshare by merely existing and being called a "Playstation" item at a time when the PS2 had 80 million units sold. Compared to a legacy like that, it's easy to seen why the PSP is just a failure. A higher-than-usual sales number is still not indicative of success and comparison to OTHER FAILURES (what are you trying to prove saying it sold more than GC or Xbox?) is not either.

IT's just one of those things you are going to have to accept. Every Nintendo fan and Microsoft fan has had to put up with it. GC flopped (despite being profitable), Xbox 1 was a failure to the tune of $4 billion (despite being loved by the press), it is simply Sony's turn to have a failure and for their fans and backers to accept it.