Is The Sony Playstation Portable Dying?

[Nintendo]

Look! Everyone on these boards know or knew that I'm/I was a huge fan of the SONY PlayStation Portable...So...Be honest people! And don't BS me around or worse, beat around the bush!

Don't **** me around!...A simple, Yes or No answer will do.

Is our little Portable PlayStation 2 on it's last legs?

...because imo, it must be - for ME to have totally given up on it.

It's as if SONY is putting most of its efforts on PLAYSTATION 3.

 

[Ganepark32]

I don't see it as either. I look at it in the same way in the DS in that Nintendo had abandoned it for awhile, with no decent title apart from all these cooking/learning 'games'. Yet with the advent of the DSi, they've started up again.

The PSP is in the same boat really. At the moment, in Japan at least from the sales figures, it's really being kept afloat by third party games. I wouldn't say it's dead yet. But I think Sony could do more to help get the console out there. There is virtually no advertising for it at all on UK tv anymore.

So I'd say no it isn't dead yet giving the recent resurgance in Japan but will die should Sony continue to not advertise or do anything with it in the other territories.

 

[Squirrel61]

In Japan, it's more alive as it's ever been, with sales figures being much higher than that of the DS ever since the PSP2000 model was introduced (and monster hunter portable )

In the rest of the world, Sony's desparately trying to keep it alive and kill it at the same time. The problem is that there aren't any blockbuster games being released, and haven't been for a while. Add the agressive firmware upgrade policy and the limitations that Sony's trying to lay upon the users and you see why it's loosing popularity.

Btw. I'm a PSP fan too. And I seriously think that releasing the PSP3000 in its current form is one of the worst mistakes Sony has made in the PSP's history. They should've tested the screen better, added the second nub that 80% of the users is asking for and added a built-in cam. Maybe some more effort to increase battery life instead of decreasing it would've been welcome too. As it is now, the PSP3000 is just a minor (and unnecessary) update to the PSP2000. As a new buyer, you don't have any choice but to buy it (and probably are perfectly happy with it) but for existing PSP1000/PSP2000 owners, there's no reason to upgrade. When Nintendo released the DS Lite, you could see many DS users where upgrading because of the improvements made.

Sony won't drop the PSP, they're emphasizing on the link between PS3 and PSP to give both machines more value. But I think they should get more out of the connection than they currently do.

 

[craigix]

There are pretty big rumours that the PSP2 is ARM based too, so probably no backward compatibility for the old PSP games (but I'm sure they will port over and resell PSP games, clever move).

 

[Esn]

"Other"; I don't know. I was never interested in it in the first place, so I don't really know or care what's going on. I'm only following the Pandora these days.

 

[jbrodack]

I don't know either. I thought the psp was doing well sales wise and even doing better than the ds lately. however I've never really had much interest in the psp. few of the commercial games have interested me (dracula x being only that comes to mind) and as far as homebrew goes I'd rather not have to use hacks to get it to do what I want and like the community and open nature of the device covered on this site.

so though I've never been a fan, from an outsider perspective it seems its doing well and still has a scene behind it.

 

[Squirrel61]

... it seems its doing well and still has a scene behind it.

Sony's doing their ultimate best to kill that scene. They're driving away respected commercial developers with their licensing policy and unbelievable high development costs (a devkit for the PSP costs BIG bucks) and they try to make homebrew impossible by all means. In the last months, a few commercial devs have abandoned the PSP (or at least said they would) and many homebrew devs have jumped to other platforms.

 

[CUPC4KES]

i voted yes,

to me there are barely any new releases, most of the games in hmv/zavvi etc are at a budget price point, the last big games were crisis core and god of war which seems ages ago and the only future releases that have any mention in the media are patapon 2 and loco roco 2, both of which i thought the first games were boring, so yes, i think its over for psp.

 

[waffles]

No way, its selling and sony needs the cash right now.
Why would they kill a relatively successful system off immediately after releasing a new model? (the 3000)
I think this will be the last hardware revision (both for nintendo and sony), with both moving to the whole download to play system.

 

[daclassicgamingmaster]

Resistance is coming to PSP soon.

It will probably try too hard to be like its PS3 counterpart though, and end up failing at being decent.

 

[TwoHeadedBoy]

Well, I voted "no", but that's only because on a recent search-around for games on the Internet thingy, I found over forty games I'd be interested in playing. The whole lack of region lock-out is always a good thing, and a nice move, even if it's advertised to the contrary.

 

[Squirrel61]

Why would they kill a relatively successful system off immediately after releasing a new model? (the 3000)

I think they're killing it with the PSP-3000. There's much controverse and many people don't like it. Maybe it will sell pretty good at first, but as soon as people discover that it is crap, sales figures will drop.
QUOTE
I think this will be the last hardware revision (both for nintendo and sony), with both moving to the whole download to play system.

If you mean that you think it will be the last hardware revision of the current model, I agree. I think the DSi is just a bootstrap for the real DS successor, which will appear in 2-3 years time. And the PSP-3000 will force Sony to come with something completely new in 1-1.5 years time to save their market share, although they probably designed the model to last for 2-3 years.

 

[White Demon]

Sony have effectively killed it off themselves with the new PSP3000 model.

 

[waffles]

Im imagining the DSi stays in its current role, and the game boy comes back to compete against the psp2.
I can dream, cant i?

 

[Nintendo]

lol, anything is possible. B)

http://community.eu.playstation.com/playst...age.id=426#M426

 

[carlgeorge]

I voted yes. Simply because I haven't touched mine for a couple of years now. I'm simply not interested in it. Nothing inspires me to go out and get any more games for it.

I think that the blurry screen was my main gripe IIRC. Oh, and that analogue nub thing.

 

[Kayday]

I said yes but just recently started playing it again because I got KOF Orochi Saga. There's only a few more games I'm looking forward too. Samurai Shodown Anthology, Patapon 2, Kingdom Hearts.

 

[tim0391]

I voted for No as i want one lol but I would only use it while travelling tbh. I barely use my DS or GP2x.

 

[ashdjones]

I voted no because i've met/witnessed loads of people playing with their PSP's.

This is anecdotal I know, maybe it's because i'm in the active agegroup or maybe it's just more popular in the UK? There's nothing particularly remarkable about the PSP, it's kind of like the PS2 - fairly reliable machine, sizable game library that appeals to a broad base of people.

Personally, I like the game-disc aspect of the machine. I know it uses more battery, but it certainly saves on memory and I like owning a little disc copy of my game.

I have a feeling that in the future you'll have PSP collectors paying hundreds for rare UMD video discs.

 

[Frogboy]

I voted no because the PSP just started selling really well about a year ago in the US at least. They finally found a price point that worked well for them. I could be wrong though. Selling the consoles doesn't neccesarily mean that there are a lot of good games for it **cough**Wii**cough**.

I've never owned one however. I wanted a homebrew device and decided to support the GP2X since they were making the device to do what I wanted without hacking it. Shame the controls suck so bad and I can't play half the games that I want to on it. Pandora should fix that and then some.