PSP To Increase U.S. Lead Over DS 154
Next Generation has a piece on an analyst's prediction that Sony's PSP will gain more ground on the Nintendo DS, here in the states, over the next five years. From the article: "SIG has compared year-by-year sales and estimates for the first five years of each machine's life, using sell-in and factory shipments. It points out that in its first year both PSP and DS managed around 13 million units each, with DS slightly ahead. Year two cumulative stats give PSP 25 million over DS' 22 million. In Year Three the difference rises to ten million (38m to 28m). In Year Four, PSP's lead has stretched to 15 million and to 20 million by Year Five." Though the PSP is now leading in the U.S., the DS is still king of the mountain in Japan.
Re:DS is my choice (Score:5, Informative)
I love my DS and I had sawaru (the wario game), jump all stars, mario64ds, and that trauma center game, plus I've borrowed my friends' games like kirby and the pacman game. the DS rocks...
although, the PSP has lumines which had kept my attention far more than the DS. I also had an NES emulator on there with more ROMs than I could ever play. The psp looks beautiful and the looks alone provide entertainment sometimes. Watching movies/tv shows/pr0n on the thing is pretty sweet, too (although, I'd never buy a UMD movie).
the PSP feels more versatile since you can run so many alternate apps on it, but the DS is just so much more creative. The #1 thing that's killing the PSP, though, is the lack of decent games. Seriously, every game for it feels like a PS2 game crammed into the handheld. there's nothing original about it. they're all sequals. Lumines is the only shining star, but it did dull-out after 8 months.
too bad I bricked my PSP during a botched official firmware update and now I gotta call japan to see how to get it fixed. oh well.
Re:when did the psp outsell the ds? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:when did the psp outsell the ds? (Score:1, Informative)
According to this source, it hasnt.
Re:I 3 mine (Score:2, Informative)
I bought a PSP in December, and I hated it. Here's my little story:
I bought the $300 'giga-pack' which came with the 1 gig card. This seemed the only way to not get totally screwed on flash memory. (It was like $120 to buy the 1 gig card seperately, even though equivalent SD and Compact Flash was a lot cheaper...) When I got it home, I made a huge mess opening up the box. Man there was lots of crap in there. In retrospect, it wasn't all bad. Case for the unit, headphones + remote, cleaning cloth, etc. (my main reason for bitching about it was that it was a total pain in the ass to bundle all that shit back together into the box.)
When I turned it on, I noticed 4 stuck pixels on it. I'm not overly pissy about that considering that they're very small and barely noticable (I could only see them on black loading screens etc), but it does speak volumes about Sony's commitment to quality.
I played Liberty City Stories for a little while. I'm happy to report that loading times were not unreasonable and the game was actually quite fun. However, after about 15 minutes into it, something peculiar started to happen. Somehow the Home button was making contact with the casing. If I tapped the unit: "Would you like to quit this game?" would show up. (Note: This would NOT pause the game, either.) I lost a few missions this way. I'd try to shoot somebody and all the sudden the PSP thought I was pressing the Home button. Commitment to quality.
I took the PSP back to Best Buy to exchange it. They were out of 'Giga packs'. They sold out around Christmas, and honestly, I haven't been able to find any since. I asked them if they'd just open up one of the other PSP boxes and do a swap. No dice. (Although they did point out that they'd have been happy to do that had I paid for the replacement warranty. Assholes.)
I never got around to having much fun on that system, I'm sad to say. To Sony's credit, I think I was the victim of bad luck. Can't say it matters much anyway, though. I went and bought a second DS along with Mario Kart. My GF and I have been having a lot of fun with that.
Re:when did the psp outsell the ds? (Score:1, Informative)
And according to this source, it has. Who's right? I haven't seen any figures for the US that I'd actually consider believable. My impression is that in the US, the 2005 numbers were neck and neck. However, considering that the DS sold for 12 months in 2005, whereas the PSP sold for 9, the PSP has a better trend.
Re:when did the psp outsell the ds? (Score:3, Informative)
I was wrong earlier btw, it's not 3:1, it's a tad under 2:1(around 1.8:1). A bit under 4 million(3.6) total for the DS since it's launch late 2004, and just over 2 million(2.1) for the PSP launched just outside Q1 of this year. That's just going off NPD funworld, who are generally reliable(except they no not what happens within wal-mart, but then again NO ONE does) and above all agenda free.
Seriously, IGN, Gamespot, NPD, numerous other gaming news sites ALL have similar numbers, and your counter is a guy who happens to work for an insignificant news agency and who is basically citing himself on his blog.