Mmm,last year when we had Total software sold in the NA charts it showed that in the US the PSP ratio was higher than in the DS .

So this is more a thing about Japan than anything .

I follow Famitsu notes and the charts ,so I know a lot of occidental product for the PSP just isnt released in Japan at all .Games as Pursuit Force ,Marvel Ultimate Alliance ,Rainbow Six Vegas ,GTA ,GTA Vice City ,Madden ,Star Wars Battlefront ,Daxter ,Lego Star Wars II ,Socom Fireteam Bravo and many others are games that did very well on the PSP last months but just werent released in the PSP in the japanese market .

In the US/EU, the PSP's "multi media" functions are generally overlooked: it ocassionally gets used as as MP3 player, it rarely is used to show movies. Overall, if you buy a PSP in the EU/US, you're buying it to play games, and thus, you tend to buy more games. 

Does that seem like a logical explanation to you?  

uh, they weren't released because they would probably sell about 10-20k each.  That happens for every system though.

i think if Sony were to kill the PS2.

alot of the games could/would jump ship to the PSP and really give it a second wind there.

It's mainly a Japan thing.

In Japan, there are far fewer games that truely appeal to the J-portable gamer. You get old rehashes of Final Fantasy games, Tales of #1003567, hapless other junky games, ad nauseum. There is very little J-support in the way of MEANINGFUL games.

However, having said that, when real games come out, they do well: look at MHP2. That game is a friggin' beast. Despite the poor tier ratios, and rather tepid sales (compared to the DS), it's done real well.

In the US, we have good Madden, Killzone, GTA and a few other games, that cater to the US/Eur fanbase. No games = no sales.

I know it's clich'e but "wait until FF:Crisis Core" to really judge their sales. FF:CC should do great (500k+), which should be considered a succuess.

Really, the main reason is Sony really doesn't give a crap about luring devs to the PSP, and creating Nintendo-like first party IPs on the PSP. There are no truely unique titles on the PSP. Nintendo gave the DS Touch-Gen titles - something totally new, fresh and innovative, JUST for the DS's strengths. What has Sony done that's really been meaningful in the way of strong support?

IMO, if Sony just woke up, and decided to put Lair, Heavenly Sword, LBP-class, or other similar-big new IPs on the PSP, and actually cared, it'd sell far better. PSP's sell when there are big name games out. Unfortuntaely, when 80% or more of your 1st party IPs are just ports, or existing IPs, it just doesn't cut it - look at the GBA. It got canned real quick when Nintendo started caring about unique titles on the DS, and not the same old crap. There is no "NSMB" or "Nintendogs". Just "GT5" and "GOW:PSP"...The same old (abliet big) IPs. NSMB was a totally unique DS title that was a return to 2d - and a true sequal to SM All Stars.

Sony could easily make the PSP far more competitive, but they aren't really trying. And it absolutely sucks since the PSP is a great, great divice. But for now, it's a media player 1st, and a gaming system 2nd.

1/ Like with the PS3 - Sony are pushing it as "more than" a games machine. This means not only that people buy it with NO intention of playing games on it - gamers end up doing things on it other than gaming. This reduces the number of games bought.

2/ Warez. When I was in HongKong, the warez scene was HUGE. Every man on each corner was selling warez equipment - every PSP sold basically came with everything you needed. Why buy when you can copy?

3/ The PSP is basically a "portable" console. If you do most of your "console" gaming at home - why buy one?

...

Developers see this, and have greatly reduced the quantity of software available for the PSP. Only big titles have a chance of actually selling well.

...

It should be noted that PSP software is selling pretty badly in the US as well. I suspect this holds for Europe too.

"In Japan, there are far fewer games that truely appeal to the J-portable gamer. You get old rehashes of Final Fantasy games, Tales of #1003567, hapless other junky games, ad nauseum. There is very little J-support in the way of MEANINGFUL games."

Could you clarify what you mean by "meaningful?"

I'm a little suspect of this response, Stick. Are you saying that Sony isn't making a push because they don't care? Doesn't that seem a little unlikely? Their purpose is to make money. The PSP could obviously make more money. Are you suggesting that Sony doesn't care about making more money?

I'd buy the argument that they are unsure of how additional support would help the PSP. That would be a reasonable motivation, perhaps; they're afraid of dumping money in and getting little money out of it.

Personally, I think if there IS a development gap for the PSP (and I don't think there is, at all. It's getting almost exactly as much support as I'd except a system with fairly marginal market share to get), it's probably because Sony doesn't have the resources to do something about it. It costs a whole lot of money to make PS3 games; they're developing several games that cost 20M+ dollars to produce (I've heard Killzone2 is above 35M!). If they're going to support the PS3 that heavily, then they can't afford to support the PSP very much. It's simple economics, I suspect. 

You have a good point there. Although I can't see why anyone would buy the PSP without some intention of buying games.
I think Final Fantasy VII: CC will be a good way to measure just how well software can perform on the platform.