The PSP sells very well considering its price and piracy issues. The issue is mosty people buy a PSP for the sole purpose of pirating. I have a report that I am finishing in my spare time that uses data from various tracker sites on the internet. I'm now trying to include things such as Usenet but getting data is difficult. For example;
God of war: Chains Of Olympus total sales 1.77m (VGCharz, 2009)
God of war: Chains of Olympus torrent downloads as of March 2009 -- 2,433,821
now why you cannot easily estimate a sales loss based on number of times the torrent was downloaded, a lot of people would of easily bought the game after trying it out and many would not buy it in any case, it's still shockingly high.
In terms of platform sales its the same reason the Wii outsells the HD consoles. Nintendo platforms are no longer about catering to gamers, they're about catering to people in the transition period, or non-gamers. This doesn't mean that there are not good core games on both consoles, because there are, but most core games do not sell well on either platform (Wii and DS)
There are exceptions of course, but generally speaking, no core games sell well on the wii or the ds.
(Brawl is not a core game, Twilight Princess would be the major exception)
The DS sells to millions of people just so they can play brain age, mario and whatever horse games they can get, while the PSP has none of that user base.. if you're buying a psp, you're buying it for A) Pirating old platforms such as snes, gba, gbc, nes, genesis, ps1 etc. B) Playing and purchasing REAL games, or C) a combination of both.
There is no casual appeal to anything that is a sony product, really.
Microsoft and Nintendo have both done significantly better jobs with microsoft being the only company to have a stellar price range.
You may say that the wii is cheaper than the SP3, but the hardware in the wii is no where near the value you get for 250$, not to mention with no greatest hits lineup and most games still in the 50+USD range for new titles, the wii is the most expensive console to own and play REAL games on. Of course, there are millions of people, i'd say around 20million, who own a wii and own nothing but wii sports, wii fit, and maybe a handful of other casual games.
With an original price point of 250$, scaled down to 169CAD the PSP is really selling very well. Sony must be incredibly pleased with its sales, considering its almost as expensive as an XBOX360 and it sells equal or more every week, and usually dominates the Japanese market with the DS.
If the PSPgo is a hit, and sony can deal with piracy, you will see a whole lot more games being developed for the PSP and resulting sales will be impressive. I preordered my PSPgo just for reference, and I have a new psp3000.. the platform is excellent and offers an excellent line up of games, it's just that games don't come so often on the platform.
Sales wise, the DS is untouchable, the sames reason the wii is untouchable. young children and nongamers will blindly purchase these platforms, and its not going to stop any time soon. The worry about these platforms is that the other platforms, 360, ps3, psp are slowly building a large instal base as well, when most of the core gamers continue to purchase core games on these platforms significantly more than on the wii, developers are going to turn to the HD consoles, especially with PS3 dev getting so easy now, along with massive drops in dev kit prices. (and nintendo is a massive pain in the rear with getting dev kit stuff in line).
Madworld would of sold close to 2million copies on the 360 and PS3, for instance.
I think that the DS, along with the wii, are in a land of their own, they are not so much Video Game platforms anymore as they are straight up electronic toys. They are surely still fantastic devices, and do offer a rich gaming experience, I just think it's overshadowed by the other.
