Sony Winding Down the PSP

Linnen writes "Sony has started the process of phasing out its PSP handheld console. From The Guardian: 'Shipments to the U.S. ended this year, and they are closing in Japan soon. European stores will see their last arrivals toward Christmas. Launched in Japan in December 2004, it is almost 10 years old – not a bad achievement for a handheld that was almost written off early in its lifespan. ... The console struggled with high piracy levels of its titles, which meant the likes of EA, Activision and Ubisoft were reticent about committing to major development projects. However, the ease with which hackers were able to break the device's security system also meant that it became a favorite with the homebrew development scene, and amateur coders are still producing games and demos for the platform. Some look back on the machine as a failure beside the all-conquering Nintendo DS, but this is unfair. The console sold 80m units, a figure boosted by a series of excellent hardware and featureset updates, including the slimmer PSP-2000 and PSP-3000 models. '"

Re:Piracy

[Anonymous Coward]

Given that anybody who pirated the content likely wouldn't have paid for it even if they'd not pirated it.

Is that really true? I'm not much of a gamer, but I am a huge music and film fan. I have a collection a couple of thousand CDs and DVDs and used to spend a large chunk of my paycheck every month on more to listen to or watch. But nowadays, pretty much everything I become interested in is already available as FLAC for music, or DVD/Bluray images for films from filesharing communities, with booklet scans too. So, my interest in actually paying for stuff has waned. From discussions on filesharing communities with forums, it seems like this is common: there's always one guy who is willing to pay for the media, but then he torrents it to several hundred people who have given up on paying for content. A great many of us would have paid for the CD or DVD if we had no other choice, so yes, piracy is a lost sale.

(Posting AC for obvious reason.)

Re:Piracy

[Registered Coward v2]

Given that anybody who pirated the content likely wouldn't have paid for it even if they'd not pirated it

While that is a standard "piracy has no effect on sales" arguement I don't buy it. While that may be true for some pirates who simply get off having one of every released software title or very expensive products, for many products I bet the allure of free vs. buy is too strong take away free and some probably not insignificant percentage would buy.

this is just an excuse from the likes of EA, Activision, and Ubisoft. (And when was the last time any of the above put out a game that wasn't another tepid dishwater remake or derivative copy of somebody else's game anyway?)

The quality of the product aside it's pretty clear that high rates of piracy relative to sales results in less development and products.

Re:Piracy

[Belial6]

Pretty fair assessment. We never owned any PSPs, but in our household of three (me, my wife, and our son), we have owned 8 DS products (including our current 3DSes). A couple of of the original DSLs developed bad hinges, but that isn't a big surprise given that they were constantly being opened and closed for 5 years before being replaced with 3DSes.

Re:Piracy

[trytoguess]

While userbase may be the number one reason to not develop for the PSP, it's likely the ease of piracy was another major concern. Cause lets fact it, free beats paid any day. Doesn't help that piracy was in many ways a superior option since it let you carry multiple games in 1 card and saved battery life by not utilizing the umd drive.