PSP Price Cuts Coming This Holiday?
CNN/Money ran an article by Chris Morris, suggesting that Sony might cut the price of its PSP by $50. The PSP currently costs around $200, far more than its main competitor, the DS Lite. At the moment, the PSP has shipped 20 million units, while the DS has sold 21 million units. There’s a big difference between shipped and sold, as one might tell.
This could be one way for Sony to sell more units, lower the price. Another way is to create more compelling game titles, as Joystiq suggests. Lots of DS titles have sold by the millions, Brain Age, New Super Mario Bros., and Nintendogs. The PSP on the other hand has had one major best seller, GTA: Liberty City.
As hardware sales indicate, the PSP has continuously been outsold by the DS, worldwide. I doubt Sony can challenge Nintendo in the handheld wars with a simple price reduction. They need new (and innovative) titles for the PSP, but somehow I think they already know that.
See also: EA Shifts Focus From PSP To DS
Read (CNN/Money)
August 13th, 2006 at 3:09 pm
Agree. Sony needs some new and exciting titles, but I doubt it’s gonna happen anytime soon. And for some reason, the only new and exciting title they have had, LocoRoco, didn’t sell very well as it were forecasted. And as it’s said in the article, shipped units is not the same as sold units. In Japan the DS lite is completely outsold the day it is shipped to stores. I think it’s a long time since Sony have had that same kind of luxury problem
August 13th, 2006 at 5:50 pm
I believe this would be a bad move for Sony. The problem with the PSP is that you don’t have to actually buy games for it. It’s already been established that software does not sell well on PSP, and a price drop will do nothing to help that. People want to have a PSP to do everything EXCEPT play games.
The PSP seems like a nice system and will probably sell no matter what. Software is an entirely different matter. If Sony decides on a price drop, they will be operating at an even greater loss and still have no way to recover from those losses.
(NOTE: If the PSP price does actually drop, I think I’ll pick one up)
August 13th, 2006 at 8:59 pm
Grrrrrrrrr someone removed comment !!!
the funny thing i was one of those people who thoguth the PSP was going to blow the n-ds out fo the water easily and now seems like its alot harder than i thought. oh well i still like my PSP and have about 20 games and counting and like 4 UMD fickz and loving it! and dont plan to buy an n-ds the games for it are boring for me even the new mario bros which i played at ebgames couple of levels looked so simple and nothing new really. the only kinda good game on the system i care is children of mana.
PSP ha smor emature games i like to play on the game like my latest purchase Tekken-Dark Resurrection.
August 14th, 2006 at 7:58 am
The PSP has indeed more mature games than N-DS. But as of right now, because of the success of the DS, a lot of software developers are now creatig a lot of mature games for the handheld. Like EA games for example
August 18th, 2006 at 11:04 pm
I bet if Sony lowered the price on it’s PSP’s, then they too would see an increase in sales. The PSP is a great, great hand held device. But the DS Lite does almost just as much(if not now, then soon when u consider upgrades) and is sold at a price considerably less than the cost of a PSP. It almost appears as if Nintendo’s gimmick was to market a high tech device and sell it for dirt cheap in the hopes that people would realize what a steal they were getting. Almost ingenious when you think about it. Who the heck would have thought of that- not Sony! That’s why my dang PSP is still on layway. LOL..