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Portables (Games) Businesses Sony

First Week PSP Sales Results 99

Posted by Zonk from the trial-by-sales dept.
Gamespot has results from the first week of PSP sales. Unit sales have already cracked 600,000, generating in the neighborhood of $US 150 million for Sony. From the article: "Sony would only say that the device sold 'over half a million units' during its first 48 hours on the market, meaning it sold only approximately 100,000 units continent-wide over the next five days--at best. Still, Sony said the tally was enough to 'further validate PSP as the most anticipated product of 2005 and an industry-altering force.'"
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First Week PSP Sales Results More

First Week PSP Sales Results

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  • Anyone know if they are any good or with good games? I'm considering getting one.
    • It's a neat little gizmo, but $250 with no games thrown in? That's just too high. Add a game, and you'll throw down nearly $300. I will consider it when the price is more reasonable.
      • You might check around for a used system if you want it a little cheaper. Last Saturday the Gamestop near me already had used units on sale for $199. I would just make sure you can view/test the screen before you commit to purchasing it.
    • Lumines is considered to be the best game for the system if you enjoy puzzle games at all. As for those people who are saying it didn't sell well, At least six of my friends and I went out and bought it within three days of launch. Due to some funky law in our school which disallows "electrically operated signalling devices," PSPs can be used in class since they operate off of batteries (chemical)... and there's someone with a psp in every class.
    • I brought two of the units on launch day(one to sell on eBay if brick and mortors run out)and the top three games are Ridge Racer, Wipeout Pure and Lumines. Each of these games haved received top scores from all sources so I brought them. I have been gaming for a long time so I knew they would be good picks. Ridge Racer is incredible and you will be amazed at the sensory overload you will experience during gameplay. Wipeout Pure is nothing but incredible eye candy and speeding hovercrafts that are so fast y

  • It'll be worth it... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Xlipse ( 669697 ) on Thursday April 07, 2005 @06:05PM (#12170278)
    Frankly.. the PSP is great for Sony and not so great for the comsumers - considering all the extra money you have to spend beyond the initial purchase price.

    Call me a GBA fanboy, but I've spent a total of $30, MAYBE $40 TOTAL on "EXTRA" things for my GBA besides what comes with the unit and games. Sony seems to want to milk us for everything we're worth :(.

    I'd consider it a LITTLE better value when the unit drops down to $150 and comes with a decent game. Probably won't happen until after XMas 2005 though.

  • Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Thursday April 07, 2005 @06:06PM (#12170286)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:Force? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by nege ( 263655 )
      I own a DS...hate it in fact. VERY few games out so far, nintendo is basically sitting on its rear. At least with the PSP you can do many more things with it like eBooks (now if we could find some eBooks), movies, pitures, mp3, etc.

      Anyone wanna buy a DS??
      • If they ever get Linux [dslinux.org] running well on the DS I might be interested, it'd be really cool as a pocket pc/gameboy. ;)
        • Someone has already registered the psplinux.org domain name, so you might have to make a choice.
          • But the PSP doesn't have a stylus so it's no good to me...I want to use the Gimp or something on it (portable digital sketchpad) ;)
          • It's www.psp-linux.org. IMHO these people are either scam artists or well intentioned idiots.

            Developers have to 'sign up' and "Only a small majourity[sic] is qualified for the project." The message boards have no technical content at all, and the admins running it have made some statements that indicate a deep lack of knowledge. (no knowledge of MagicGate, equating psp to generic MIPS) Critical questions get removed from the boards. Other posts are of the "d00d th1s rox0r!" variety. Donations are welcome a

    • Haha if it sells out, everyone complains that they didn't ship enough, if it doesn't sell out, everyone complains that it's a flop. Lose, lose.
  • All in all, not bad for a non-holiday season launch. Early enough to get some units into gamers hands before the summer vacation/car trips hit and enough of a lead on Xmas 2005 to allow the developers to really put out some kick-ass games for the holidays.

    I hope these sales figures are enough for studios to devote more time to AAA PSP titles... the one title I was really looking forward to (Death Jr.) has already been pushed back to July 2005.
  • I believe they shipped 1 million units to America, which means they sold just over half of their stock in the first week. While this isn't bad, all the media outlets were reporting forecasts of being totally sold out and impossible to find. I know there were 11 units at Target when I went there last week, and 5 at another, more local chain of retail stores. Not too impressive, overall.
    • The specialty stores totally sold out (EB, etc). It's the walmarts and targets that haven't. The initial wave of buyers are early adopters, and these guys usually don't buy at Walmart but rather go to specialty stores.

      Apparently, the specialty stores went through 3 waves of shipments that sold out. That's very good.

      As word of mouth spreads from the early adopters, the non-early adopters will start buying them from "just anyplace", and the walmarts and tagerts will sell way more units.

      Sony probably made a
      • Alternate explanation: At $250, the system hasn't generated enough interest among anyone but the die hard gamers. Sony won't crack that market at this price point. They need to make a price cut, and are going to have to wait on that - they can't cut price six months after release to get the Christmas season without a backlash. Which means that the PSP is going to have a very rough first year.

  • Well, let's see. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by schild ( 713993 ) on Thursday April 07, 2005 @06:15PM (#12170370) Homepage Journal
    1. It was the end of March - not the christmas season ANYWHERE.
    2. It was $250.
    3. It had very little advertising compared to the Touching is Good campaign last October and November.
    4. It had triple the number of games Nintendo had out after 4 months at launch.
    5. Despite getting some of the lowest ratings, the top-selling game was a decent Diablo clone.
    6. Stores are still able to stock it and people still want it.

    There's no doubt in my mind that Sony can sell any PSPs they ship. It may take a while. But they'll sell. As more and more online-enabled games come out and more killer apps start to appear (GTA and Infected anyone? Maybe even Advent Rising if you buy into the hype.) they're just going to sell better. All things considered, they came into a market dominated by Nintendo and are outselling the Nintendo DS by I'd say a margin very close to 2:1. That, by any measurement, is monstrous success.

    • Re:Well, let's see. (Score:4, Informative)

      by satoshi1 ( 794000 ) <satoshi.sugardeath@net> on Thursday April 07, 2005 @06:20PM (#12170410) Homepage Journal
      2:1? My ass. Show me numbers that display show that the PSP is outselling the DS by 2:1.
      • Here [cube-europe.com]

        Not 2:1 in totals, but in weekly sales, it was until the last week of March.

        Those numbers are sales in Japan as of the end of March. The PSP has 623k sold this year, DS has 485k. In the last week of March, the DS had 55k and the PSP had 43k, but the week before, the DS only had 22k. I saw numbers from before that that were pretty much the same.

        The jump was because the new colors came out that week. I'm not sure if it's managed to hang onto those numbers or not. The site they link to as their source
        • Yep, as the AC said, this isn't Japan, this is the US, so we need some US numbers.
        • Did the two systems launch at the same time in Japan, though? If not, to really be fair you'd need to compare the two systems' numbers based on x months since their respective launches, not just March numbers or 2005 totals.

          I didn't follow the Japanese launches so I don't know what the timeline was there.
        • The PSP counting these sales figures has sold 1.5 million units in the US and japan. The DS otoh has sold 6 million(It sold just under 4 mil AT launch). It was outselling the DS for a brief period of time in japan(by a very small margin), but that's since reversed.

          Yes, that's a 4.5 MILLION unit deficit, and that's JUST PSP v. DS before any AAA DS titles even hit the states(and the PSP has a weak lineup for a while, if you don't like the launch titles you're gonna be SOL for a little while). You can chec

    • Re:Well, let's see. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by MilenCent ( 219397 ) * <johnwh@gmai[ ]om ['l.c' in gap]> on Thursday April 07, 2005 @06:27PM (#12170458) Homepage
      Your list of reasons seem to give both reasons for it selling well, and for it *not* selling well. Weird, that.

      All things considered, they came into a market dominated by Nintendo and are outselling the Nintendo DS by I'd say a margin very close to 2:1. That, by any measurement, is monstrous success.

      Except it's a new release, and the DS sold much better during the same period of its release. So the PSP is not a monstrous success "by any measurement."

      While it's difficult to argue against the potential selling power of GTA on the PSP, remember that the PSP is less powerful than the PS2, and Rockstar's first true-3D GTA was for that system. It's almost as much up in the air as how well that will work as it is how Katamari Damacy will work on the DS. (I've got my fingers crossed on that one....) And Nintendo *does* have some interesting DS software in the works, like Nintendogs, Meteos, a new 2D Super Mario Bros., Advance Wars, and other things.

      Anyway, none of this means that the PSP won't win out in the long run... but neither does it mean the DS won't. It'll be more competitive than the PS2/Gamecube fight.

      • Except it's a new release, and the DS sold much better during the same period of its release. So the PSP is not a monstrous success "by any measurement."

        Like I said above, the DS sold 513,000 units in its first week.

    • The DS had 18 games before the PSP launch. Not exactly three times the number of titles. More like ONE TIME the number of titles.

  • Typo in headline? (Score:4, Funny)

    by macdaddy357 ( 582412 ) <macdaddy357@hotmail.com> on Thursday April 07, 2005 @06:17PM (#12170380)
    The PSP did not sell out in its debut. It was not even close. Shouldn't that headline read first WEAK PSP sales results?
  • Sony said the tally was enough to 'further validate PSP as the most anticipated product of 2005 and an industry-altering force While many people anticipated it, I certainly whouldn't say it was the most anticipated... Did it sell better than Halo 2? hmmm.... I don't know the numbers, but I imagine quite a few more copies of halo 2 got sold than PSPs.

    • Re:it might validate but... (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Halo 2 was released in 2004.

      This is 2005 and we're only in April. Its' marketing BS and you fell for it.

    • Did it sell better than Halo 2? hmmm.... I don't know the numbers, but I imagine quite a few more copies of halo 2 got sold than PSPs.

      Regardless of the fact that Halo 2 was released in 2004 (as someone else has already pointed out), you're missing some key points...

      1. You're comparing software sales to hardware sales. It's like saying that the XBox is a flop because GTA: San Andreas outsold it (disclaimer: I've got no numbers for that, it's purely an example to illustrate the ignorance of your asserti
  • To be honest I think the market strategy for the PSP hasnt been very good, they started sales all the way til april (When they should have been released in xmas or wait 'til e3) they refused to sell the unit opened (to check for dead pixels) and on top of all, they sold the complete collectors package only (which makes the entire purchase even more expensive) and STILL they did got sold out in a lot ot stores (and they are sold out here too) just imagine what would have happened if the launch had been "succ
    • Well I think to everyones Chagrin that we are going to see something amazing in this post... As Of January of 2004 GBA had sold a meager 299,000 units... this is the benchmark comparison that we should be looking at in the handheld wars yes the GBA of all current Generation Handheld systems is the weekling... but what you have to look like is that it is the True Nintendo Handheld. Next the DS is an intermediary handheld the Next Gameboy will be what we should base our opinions of the Nintendo Gameboy/Sony

  • Maybe the title should have read (Score:4, Funny)

    by Kamalot ( 674654 ) on Thursday April 07, 2005 @06:32PM (#12170509)
    First Weak PSP Sales Results
  • I can't help but wonder how many units were returned with dead pixels. Anyone have figured for the return rate yet?
    • More interesting is how many of those returned PSPs were just returned right back to the owners with a "tough luck" note attached?
      • http://www.gamespot.com/news/2005/03/25/news_61210 92.html [gamespot.com] Sony will fix them if you send them.
        • they will only fix them "If a PSP is 'determined to be defective' by SCEA"

          In the same article they quote the PSP manual: "Red, blue, or green spots (bright spots) or black spots (dark spots) may appear in certain locations on the LCD screen. The appearance of such spots is a normal occurrence associated with LCD screens and not a sign of malfunction."

          Doesn't sould like SCEA determines dead pixels to be defective to me.

          • The Sony rep suggested that PSP owners who encounter the pixel issue should try the device "for a week or two" to see if it continues to bother them. "If you find the spots are interfering with gameplay/video viewing during this period, we will support the various elements of [the PSP] warranty," the rep said.

            They wont fix it isn't invasive. They'll still fix it if it gives you problems.

    • Well since Sony said they wouldn't accept dead pixel returns until two weeks after purchase, I doubt it was a large number.
    • Well I personally know 2 friends who bought one WITH visible dead pixels and are not complaining not one bit about it, they actually think is a "collectors item" and a proof that they belong to the early adopters. (they are crazy IMO)

      Anyway I did played it and is a ton of fun. specially ridge racer 2 player and luminees

      And seriously guys they are sold out where I live.
  • "We gave it our best shot." The most anticipated product of 05? That's the biggest crock of 05 maybe. Not only was the general populous NOT looking forward to it, they gave it a nice luke-warm reception. I declare DS the victor, not out of fanboyism, but out of hard core numbers.
    • I think declaring any device as the "winner" at the moment might indicate just a touch of fanboyism. :)

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