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| mai said: @Louie First, let's make sample size bigger to be more accurate. 2008 calendar year for instance, 3rd party software sales (i.e. not developed or published by Nintendo or Sony) according to VGChartz: DS: 56,2M - 71.3% of total sales (America); 14,8M - 55,5% of total sales (Japan). PSP: 12,6M - 72,2% of total sales (America); 8,2M - 91,8% of total sales (Japan). In other words your speculation "While the DS sells more software most of the software sales are Nintendo games" absolutely not true for America and the same goes for any other market except for Japan. You made an assumption that former speculation is true "at least in Japan". Well, I'm not going to argue that. It it is true, that notably bigger part of DS software sales in Japan are Nintendo developedpublished games if compared to rest of the world. This could mean one thing for sure - Nintendo is the biggest software publisher in the world (in Japan Nintendo position even more dominant, which could explain why 44,5% of DS software sales in Japan last year are Nintendo games), Nintendo games have high appeal to japanese public (at least some of them), obviously all Nintendo games are published on Nintendo systems - as a result a quite high percentage of 1st2nd party game sales on Nintendo systems even on those, which are fully supported by 3rd parties, like DS. At the same time as you may see 1st party efforts on PSP are pretty much insignificant in Japan (~8,2%), this could mean two things or both: a) PSP didn't see any strong 1st party games for a while; b) there're no or very little 1st party games that appeal to japanese gamers. My point here is... if 3rd parties have the biggest part of software sales on the system compared to rivals, this's doesn't direclty means that system is healthy. Absolute number are relevant. But again I'm not going to argue that DS software sales are down while PSP are up last year in Japan. Here's potentially could be a problem for Nintendo, but did Sony have something to threaten Nintendo in Japan? Because Sony definitely not able to threaten Nintendo anywhere outside Japan, no chance. Finally, back to the topic... most part of already announced and, I assume, games that still going to be announced this year on PSP have no or little appeal to japanese gamers (current line-up purely westernized), and those that do have one are unlikely will change anything even in Japan (do you remember, this year is the year of DQ9 in Japan? and I can't see that Japan will get FFXIII Agito this year). If Sony is going to threaten Nintendo, they need to do this somewhere, where PSP position is stronger, i.e. in Japan (2nd selling system after all, well... there're two of them which are selling decently anyway ^_^ ). I dunno if they going to do this or not, or how successful they will be, but THIS line-up won't help. |
I'll only comment on the bolded part for now but I think you misread my post a bit.
1. I never argued it was true outside of Japan. I was just taking Japan as an example: In Japan the PSP saw huge sales last year because software that appealed to the japanese market (especially Monster Hunter) was released on the system. I know the situation is different in America and Europe. 
I also never wanted to attack Nintendo in any way.
2. This is true but that's not the point of my post. I took Japan as an example for what could happen in America and Europe.
3. I never said the system was healthy but if both systems would potentially see the same sales the PSP would definitely rival the DS when it comes to 3rd Party sales. This would lead (and has lead in Japan) to a decrease in 3rd Party support for the DS and an increase in 3rd Party support for the PSP. This has happened in Japan already, look at the announcements, there is almost more 3rd Party support for the PSP already than fo the DS.
4. This is true but remember what Japan looked like in 2007: The PSP didn't see great hardware sales, software was even weaker. Then there was the release of a new PSP model and a bunch of great games and the PSP was up.
Sorry if my post was a bit confusing. I'll give you a short explanation:
Sony was able to push the PSP to amazing sales in Japan thanks to a redesign and a bunch of games that appeal to the japanese market. Now Sony wants to do the same in the west: By releasing a huge number of 1st party games together with some 3rd party games, a new color "for girls" (= they are going to expand their audience) and probably a PSP 4000 at the end of 2009 they'll try to attack the DS exactly at a point in time when Nintendo is focusing almost exclusively on the Wii. Sony knows 3rd Parties will put more resources into the PSP if the system sees better sales in 2009 / 2010.
So people willing to buy a handheld at the end of 2009 will have the choice between a DS that relies mostly on games that are 1 year old or more and a PSP with a new design and a huge bunch of recently released games. Not all costumers but a big part of them is going to go for a PSP because of this. At least that's what Sony is hoping for.
Of course thanks to the DSi and games like Chinatown Wars the DS won't see a heavy drop in sales but compared to last year Sony is getting stronger while Nintendo is getting weaker. And that worked in Japan already and Nintendo knows that. So I think they'll try to response in some way. Of course Sony's idea could potentially turn out to be a huge failure but sitting there and waiting for the situation to turn out in favour of them wouldn't be wise from Nintendo.
