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 Just a couple of days ago a bought my latest PSP game, Patapon 2. This has been the first new PSP game for me since weeks. If you take out the latest LocoRoco sequel it's been for month. Add to that the fact that more and more retailer shrink down the shelve space for PSP games and we can conclude that the PSP is slowly becoming insignificant for publishers as well as retailers. What surprises me though is the fact that there are more than 50 million units out there on a global basis and it looks like Sony is not really harvesting this customer base. So what is the big problem here?
Well, to some extend this due to a changed market environment which changed a lot since the launch of the PSP. Just think about the launch of the iPhone and the associated AppStore. With several years lead time, Sony wasn't able to implement the Playstation equivalent until recently. But not only the store front was missing, there are also no many snack type games, the majority of games you find in Apples AppStore. Funny enough, you can find even more of those games on PS3 than on PSP. Sony made a few mistakes during the lifecycle of the PSP and it's up to be seen if this is going to change. In the beginning, the PSP had a lot of multiplatform titles which came out in parallel on PS2, which is kind of stupid as most of the PSP owners a most likely PS2 customers as well. Why would someone buy the same game on two platforms? Next mistake was the hugh price for UMD videos which finally lead to a dropping support by the various studios as customers were not willing to spend the same on UMD videos as they would pay for a DVD. Mistake number three was the slow hardware evolution that lead to three hardware revisions that almost looked the same. Finally, during the last 2 years, Sony's focus was almost 100% on the PS3 launch, which left the PSP aside. Now it looks like that Sony finally found its forgotten child again, as they obviously realised that the PSP has still some market potential. It might be too late though as both Nintendo as well as Apple are wedging Sony from both sides.
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The PSP business is definitely up-hill for Sony. Not only have they been overtaken by the DS, but now it seems the iPhone or perhaps even the iTouch are real competitors also.
