I was looking at this:

http://news.vgchartz.com/news.php?id=2827

and realized that it's impossible for PSP to strugle in 09 in JAPAN due to obvious reasons(not to even  mention a minor price drop)

Do you think that it will have a greaat year in Japan?

what about Europe and NA?

Shouldn't be much worse then last year. I think Resistance can offset God of War, and Dissidia can offset Crisis Core. But it really doesn't have anything that can seperate it from last year sales wise.

I'm hoping there are some unannouced games that will show up at the end of the year. Otherwise, we need a surprise hit, like this game: http://www.gamestop.com/Catalog/ProductDetails.aspx?product_id=72322

The current dev landscape just doesn't look to PSP friendly right now. Companies are posting loses, laying off staff and reducing their projects. So what are the cuts going to come from? We're seeing an increase in Wii and DS support, so it's definitely not going to happen there. The HD Consoles are expensive and often require multiplatting, but there still where a large portion of the money is made.

It just kind of makes sense that devs (outside of Japan) are going to turn away from the PSP to focus on other projects.

The PSP will still have some top notch games and good hardware numbers, but it will by no means see the kind of climb the DS saw after the DS lite came out.

I bought it 3 months ago expecting it to deliver some entertainment while I was on a trip to Cuba...and it did...but I realized how big of a waste in potential this console is...

Why doesn't it play PS2 games?!?!

It is essentially a portable ps2 with more RAM no? (latest models have 64 from what I have heard) Sega released the game gear and made it backwards compatible with the master system and Nomad was a portable Genesis. So why can't sony make PS2 games downloadable and installable on your memory card or compressed on to UMDs. Every PS2 release should be playable on PSP and vice versa. It would help both consoles...

Otherwise, in 2009 I plan to check out Resistance and then get back to playing what I usually play on my psp. SNEs and genesis roms.

PSP should perform well in Japan in 2009 although I would expect a decline from 2008.

With the release of DQIX in March, DSi would gain more momentum and start pulling away from P2P. Also, there is no MH2G level games to help move the hardware. Final Fantasy Agito XIII would help but there is no release date for it yet. Even if it ends up released in 2009, it would be at the end of the year and too late to make any significant impact on PSP sales.

As for sales in NA and EU, don't think it would change much either. Japan would remain by far the best performing region for PSP.