1. I will tell you. It's simple. Until the PSP starts to get decent games (and don't go Lumine and GTA on me), and a better battery, for God's sake, you will start to see PSP sales rise to heaven. It's the games, it's the games.

The only game I'm looking forward on the PSP is Crisis Core, and aside from that, if Third Parties and Sony don't start making good games, sales will stay like that and will probably go lower.

Posted at 12:16PM on Feb 5th 2006 by Erick G. 0 stars

2. Oh, that's also reflected in comments. Look at all the comments DS Fanboy gets and all the comments PSP Fanboy games. We've already played GTA, we want something new and fun.

Posted at 12:18PM on Feb 5th 2006 by Erick G. 0 stars

3. Yo.
Perhaps you haven't noticed:
The PSP ships at nearly double the price than the DS does.
What the PSP needs is just World of Warcraft. That'll fucking
rawk any other handheld ever seen on this silly planet ;-)

Posted at 12:24PM on Feb 5th 2006 by daniel-kun 0 stars

4. Ever notice that the PSP is the only Sony Console without a mountain of 50 hour-long Japanese RPG's to hold it up?

Posted at 12:38PM on Feb 5th 2006 by Jmog32q 0 stars

5. I love both the DS and the PSP but I have to say that, GOOD GAMES SELL SYSTEMS!!! You see, the PSP aparently lost the true meaning of why it's here, to give great gaming experiences to gamers. But it lost sight of this a long time ago. If only Sony and Nintendo could combine and form a super console, one with the fun gaming experience and innovation of Nintendo, and the graphical abilities, and market of Sony.

Posted at 1:12PM on Feb 5th 2006 by Marc 0 stars

6. hey, short time reader, first time poster

im viper and im an alcoholic, oh wait sh*t, wrong place

err, yep, i own a PSP, GTA was fun for a bit, prince of persia was good too (ok i say that but i deleted my gamesave accidentally while working on that snes emulator trying to get it to play a hack of sonic and knuckles my mate made, but it ended in failure), burnout had too slow a load times and was too much like burnout3 and not enough like burnout revenge

i know a few others with PSP's collecting dust

it IS the games, we need more, thrilling, new unique non-lets just release a slightly different version of a PS2 game games

games, GAMES GAMES :D ok, i apologise to all who will flame me for writing such a long comment with such crappy spelling/grammar/whatever i just bought a new bong, and it hits very nicely :)

Posted at 1:21PM on Feb 5th 2006 by Viperlin 0 stars

7. When I see ads for the PSP, I see that "it plays nuts OUTSIDE!" No mention is given to games, but rather the emphasis is on the movie aspect. Frankly, I don't need to spend $15-$20 to buy a UMD version of a movie that I already own, or could buy as a DVD. I have no need to watch movies on the go, and I have an iPod (with a much smaller screen so it doesn't get scratched) to listen to music. I think this is the same problem with musicphones and the like. Seperate devices can do their jobs much better than one device that integerates everything, and there's simply no need to try and converge them all.
The DS is expressly a gaming machine, and it has some pretty good games for it. Look at the XBox 360. Famitsu's survey (quoted by DS Fanboy) said that right now the PS3 is the most popular console of 2006, even though practically NOTHING is known about it. But the PS2 is right behind the DS, and its because of the games. People expect the PS3 to build on those games, and there is the hope that everything's backwards-compatible, so you've got a great library to start from. Personally, I own both a DS and a PSP, and the only reason I bust out the PSP is to play Madden, because the DS version is terrible. If it weren't for that, and the fact that I sold my PS2 (so no other Madden for me), I'd probably eBay my PSP, 'cuz frankly I hardly ever touch it.

Posted at 2:17PM on Feb 5th 2006 by Mongo 0 stars

8. The PSP has the games I want to play, the DS doesn't.

Posted at 2:43PM on Feb 5th 2006 by Virtuous 0 stars

9. Nintendo, and their fanboys want everyone to believe Japan reflects the whole world. There's no argument: DS is a sensation in Japan. But PSP consistently outsells all consoles there. 2nd to DS without question, but outselling the almighty PS2 every week is nothing to sneeze at.

But the rest of the world is very different. In America, PSP has outsold DS almost every month since its release. Over the spring and summer months, it was doubling and tripling the DS figures.

Europe is similar. GTA LCS has been in the UK top 10 for more than 9 weeks (currently #8). Compared to DS's flagship Mario Kart is currently #32.

The unfortunate truth is that Japan has the best sales tracking infrastructure compared to other markets, so we see those numbers most frequently. PSP is FAR more competive (and on the verge of surpassing) DS's sales worldwide.

Things are only going to improve as 2nd and 3rd Q 06 games start coming out. There's many promising titles on the way.

PSP fanboys: don't believe the hype. PSP is doing fine.

Posted at 2:47PM on Feb 5th 2006 by Mike 1 star

10. GAMES! GAMES! GAMES! now i have both a PSP and a DS and each of them is good in their own way. i basically use my PSP as a PMP and play games on my DS. it shouldnt b like this. i bought my PSP for ALL of the features it boasted, not just some. i get so tired of seeing half-assed PS2 ports coming out 4 the PSP. this makes no sense! Sony is more than capable of making good games, i mean they didnt sell ALL of those PS2's just because it could play DVD's. it was the games baby! the PSP has so much potential it could literally mop the floor with the DS if it just had some good games. yea OK we have Lumines and GTA.........SO WAT!!!. Lumines is a puzzle game 4 god sakes (and that's the best game?) and as 4 GTA, i love it 2 death, but how many times have i played that game b4 (i mean GTA franchise wise)? i want something fresh and new.

the DS doesnt have the capabilities to compete with the PSP at its full potential. but the PSP cant shake a stick at all of the GREAT games on the DS. Mario Kart, Animal Crossing, Nintendogs, Mario & Luigi, Super Mario 64 DS, Meteos, Advance Wars, Castlevania, etc. etc. i mean come on, u can honestly say with a straight face that the PSP can beat ALL that with 3-4 GOOD games. i mean where are all the GOOD RPG's? all the Fighters? the FPS (yea the lack of the second analog stick is a big reason but other button schemes can solve this. use the face buttons like a d-pad and the triggers to shoot)? and where the hell is Gran Turismo 4 Mobile (launch title my ass)? and the worst part about it is, look at the new release schedule 4 the upcoming months 4 the 2 handhelds.....change is nowhere in sight. the DS has piles of promising games while the PSP barely has any mention of ANY upcoming games. just piles and piles of movies that i've already seen or own on DVD.



the price doesnt help either. i remember complaining about the $150 i payed 4 my DS! it's a handheld 4 crying out loud! and then Sony drops the PSP 4 $250! (i bought mine used at gamestop 4 $200 like a month after launch, talk about lucky!) but i know that if i wasnt a die-hard Playstation fanboy that i would not have bought it. and now its an MP3 player.....talk about a dissapointment. and the UMD movies, the only thing keeping it afloat, i refuse 2 buy. i bought 2 and was dissapointed. i mean im paying, on average, $5 more 4 a movie with less content, that i can only watch on the little PSP screen. i mean yea the screen is nice, dont get me wrong, but why should i pay more money 2 have to squint 2 watch a movie. i mean i just cant buy a UMD movie without feeling like a swindled jackass. it's ridiculous.

well......huh........what a nice little rant that was. so i guess the bottom line of that whole thing is games and a lower price and the PSP will sell like hotcakes. they wont b able to keep it on the shelves. Sony is doing everything wrong right now, they need to re-evaluate their approach and decide if they want a PMP or Gaming Handheld cause it's definately suffering from an identity crisis.

Posted at 2:50PM on Feb 5th 2006 by B1gC72 0 stars

11. I have both a PSP and DS and I'll have to agree the main problem is unique and interesting. I'll admit things look a lot nicer on my PSP but that means jack dittly squat if your just play ports from the PS2 and XBOX. Games are what drives sales. DS has some awesome games in Mario Kart, Phoenix Wright, and Trauma Ceter (to name a few). Meanwhile the PSP's lineup is very close to that of the major consoles. It's tough to compete on all sides. UMD's are overpriced and come with little extras, memorysticks can only hold so many songs/videos, and the battery power is atrocius. The bottom line is too few good games, and too many competitors.

Posted at 3:08PM on Feb 5th 2006 by John 0 stars

12. RE #11

Battery life atrocious!?? You've got to be kidding. I use my PSP every day and i've NEVER had it run out on my over the course of the day. I charge it every night and its good to go for the next day.

As far as games, i admit its lacking the kind of games that grabs you by the throat and forces you to buy it, but i've gotten a lot of mileage out of Burnout, Lumines, GTA, Socom, Wipeout Pure, Kingdom of Paradise, and Infected. People who say "PSP has no good games" are full of it.

DS fanboys forget they had Mario64 alone for about 8 months before Advance Wars turned things around.

Posted at 3:28PM on Feb 5th 2006 by Mike 1 star

13. BETTER games. ORIGINAL games. It really bothers me how many people can't figure that out. But I guess you're just stupid.

GAMEPLAY matters most, not graphics or overpriced movies. For music most people have a ipod, which is smaller and more convenient.

Posted at 4:33PM on Feb 5th 2006 by Click here 0 stars

14. I think it's just a compbination of price of the system, games, movies, memorycards, etc... it isn't a cheap product and at the current price point people are thinking of buying ipods for their media fix or going for the cheaper DS system and getting some pretty good games. I have both systems and they are both great systems... The system just needs a price drop, forget about bundling those weak memory sticks and some of the useless accessories (i'd rather have seen a psp package with the system, battery, headphones w/ remote, atleast 256mb duo, and a screen protector for 200) I guess developers are still working on PSP games while to me it seems the DS has soo many more games that work for portable gaming. Support for cheaper and larger memory capacities would help as well. The system is great from a hardware standpoint, but i think as we all know - it's all about what your able play and that it's fun!

Posted at 4:37PM on Feb 5th 2006 by Isagani 0 stars

15. The PSP was designed to be a gaming device with multimedia features on the side. Sony is advertising it as a convergence device with the ability to play games on the side.

There's nothing wrong with the PSP, spec-wise. But developers are milking their previous franchises and porting old games. Minimal work, good profit. Not that there's anything wrong with it, there's several titles I'm looking forward to myself that are nothing more than ports. But when your entire software line-up consists of nothing but ports save but a few games here and there, something is wrong.

The issue, I think, is that the PSP is too similar to a regular console. Because it's nothing more than a Playstation made portable (hence the name of the device), the developers are regarding it as nothing more than that also, so hence the multitude of ports. The DS is radically different from anything we've seen so straight ports are pretty much impossible. And the inclusion of the touch/dual screen stimulates developer creativity rather than stifling it.

Oh, and you KNOW something is wrong with the console when IGN is reviewing MOVIES for it and one of the most anticipated 'games' on Gamespot is a MOVIE.

By the way, to those that say the numbers are representative of Japan only, you are correct. But don't start saying that the PSP outsells the DS everywhere else without proof; there's a reason why we see weekly sales charts from Japan and not anywhere else.

Posted at 4:55PM on Feb 5th 2006 by Ranma13 1 star

16. I dunno. The DS is so ugly to look at that I really can't get into it. I guess Mario Kart would become fun over time, but the controls were so weird the one time I tried to play it that I gave up. The wireless link on the DS is much harder to set up for a properly secured network (okay, maybe not properly but at least WEP) than the PSP, and I just can't bring myself to be that excited about Nintendogs. I'm sorry, but I've never been into virtual pet type crap. It does what Nintendo fanboys want, but very little else. The PSP games I've got are unfortunately pretty much the same as PS2 games, but I sold my PS2 awhile ago and I don't really mind having the opportunity to play the games wherever I want. I didn't buy a PSP to replace a home console--I bought it to play games on the road and other stuff. The weird part for me (and it may just be that it's newer) is that I barely play my xbox now.
The huge factor for me was the hackability of the PSP. I don't really care about playing ISOs--I can buy games if I really want them; however, emulators and homebrew games really get my motor going. I'm hoping PVNC can be redone to work with the EBOOT loader because that'd be friggin awesome--I could control all of my computers with my PSP from throughout the house. That being said, the PSP functions quite nicely as a multimedia controller for iTunes--I had looked into the SONOS system and my computer+home theater system now does pretty much what I would have expected from that.
I don't have a LocationFreeTV base station, but that feature intrigues me. Perhaps if an NES emulator gets working on 2.6 firmware I'll have to make that investment. I've got an iPod, so the music playing capabilities don't matter to me, and the memory stick is too small for me to play videos. I'll have to admit that UMD movies don't get my motor running at all--I don't want to buy any movie I can't play on my TV; however, that's not what I bought the system for. Just because a feature exists that is not gaming doesn't intrinsically hurt the sales of a system--the PS2 played DVDs and nobody complained about Sony distracting from gaming then.

On top of that, Sony at least brought one KILLER feature to the PSP that I haven't ever seen in a portable system--a sleep mode. Really, I'd like to see that on all game systems. I often get to a point where I don't want to wait to save a game, but don't want to lose my progress. Just pausing and turning the system off then coming back to where I was is a great feature. AFAIK you can't do that on a DS (my experience is somewhat limited--I've on played around with my brother's DS for a few minutes each time he comes home on the holidays, and then only as long as I could put up with the AWFUL aesthetics of the thing). Finally, the homebrew scene for the DS sucks. I haven't seen anything worthwhile out of them. The best they can come up with is using it as a controller for PC games, and then you've gotta have a special cartridge and some more shit.

I guess homebrew isn't as big a factor to everyone as me, but it really is a "feature" of the PSP that shouldn't be overlooked. I have yet to hear a single reason why I should run out and buy a DS. I had to talk myself out of PSP for about 6 months until I could really afford it.

Posted at 5:01PM on Feb 5th 2006 by James Hare 0 stars

17. Dunno what you're talking about, I have absolutely no problems setting up WEP on my DS. Your comment about Nintendo giving what fanboys want is a totally unsupported statement. I don't think any Nintendo fanboy wakes up in the morning and says to him/herself "Hey, you know what would be cool? A virtual dog simulator! Or maybe a game that stimulates my brain!"

From what it sounds like, homebrew to you is a very important factor...so you can play NES games? On a $250 device? I hope you realize that the DS has a perfectly working NES emulator too.

If you had done your research, you would know the DS has a sleep mode too. Close the lid, game goes into sleep mode. Open the lid, game pops back on. It's not a killer feature on the PSP, it's standard. Even the GBA had a variant on it. Later games for the GBA came with a suspend mode that you had to select from a menu.

The DS has a lot more homebrew projects out than the PSP has. While developers are busy just trying to hack the PSP's firmware, DS developers are making software. Buying a $100 flash cart for the DS is actually cheaper than buying a memory stick of the same size.

If you're going to bash the DS, find legitimate reasons rather than personal bias.

Posted at 7:22PM on Feb 5th 2006 by Ranma13 1 star

18. there is a sleep mode. just close the ds while powered and it'll pause the game and conserve power.

Posted at 7:27PM on Feb 5th 2006 by John 0 stars

19. I think almost every PSP Fanboy (term of endearment in this context) posting here has nailed it in one word: GAMES

A few other brief observations on how Sony seems to be snatching Defeat from the jaws of Victory:

1.) While the PSP offers the superior hardware... a great number of games tend to shoot for the Achiles Heal of the platform... only 1 analog stick/nub. Nintendo has released a slate of games that cater to it's hardware strengths (dual screen / touch screen / microphone) while Sony seems to be inclined to say "But it's portable"..

2.) Where are the strategy games? While certainly not for everyone... the PSP would be PERFECTLY placed for strategy and roleplaying games. Metal Gear Ac!d was the direction more titles should go. Can you imagine the sales success if Magic: The Gathering, or Star Wars Galaxies could find their way in some incarnation to the PSP? Other retooled ports could also spark new life for the PSP: Axis & Allies, Shattered Union, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic.

3.) I'm no longer impressed with ports of other console games. Once you get beyond the fact that "Hey they were able to get the whole game onto the UMD!" surprise... all you are left with is by and large is "This was alot more fun when I played it on the console"... i.e. Star Wars: Battlefront II, Prince of Persia, Madden, etc... (GTA: LCS is the exception here).

WHY CAN'T SONY AND THEIR PARTNERS SEEM TO FIGURE IT OUT. IT SEEMS THEIR MOST ARDENT SUPPORTERS ALREADY HAVE.

Posted at 8:57PM on Feb 5th 2006 by Kenobi 0 stars

20. Games are vital for a console or any gaming device to survive, i bought the psp in hope for good games, all i got so far are 4 games, nothing spetacular, i am not a fan of gta, that game is too boring and repeatative, i am looking forward to some rpg the psp offers, but they take forever to come out. Megaman X is an awesome port, which i hope x2-x6 also gets port. But i need something new and different, more of rpg, puzzle, strategy, and anything with excellent gameplay. As for the umd movies, i just think that idea is stupid, dvd offers much more and soon blu-ray would be dominate.

I am playing to get the DS Lite in the near future, since it has gotten smaller and lighter, and there are much more games i want on the ds than the psp, that is rather sad, HEAR THIS SONY, WE WANT BETTER GAMES NOT UMD MOVIES.

Posted at 10:25PM on Feb 5th 2006 by Henry 0 stars