Metalhandkerchief said:
What with Nintendo DS having 80% market share over the PSP from the get-go I'd say it was never born! At least not completely realized. I don't think the PSPGO will be different, especially with many retailers boicotting it.
Sony is slowly killing itself one shot in the foot after another. Were it not for their cell phone sales, they'd be bust by now.
how can the ds have 80% of the handheld market? ds has sold 100 million whereas the psp has sold 50 million, that means that at most the ds could have 70% of the handheld market. still leaves nintendo with a big majority, but not an 80% majority.
second, sony is a VERY large company, which sells tvs, radios, dvd/blu-ray players, laptops and desktops, speakers, cell phones, cd players, makes movies and tv shows and video games and consoles. theres not one part holding the entire company up, they are one of, if not the largest electronics companies in the world.
finally, i somewhat agree with your last point. i dont think they are killing the whole company, but they ARE killing the psp at every turn. with a new release every year for the past few years (the slim, psp-3000 a year later, the psp go and now rumors of ANOTHER update to the classic psp launching later this year to replace the 3000). of course that should be obvious looking at how they handled the psp's security. 1.50 had a bug that allowed unsigned code, but it couldnt be used to access the systems flash memory. in their rush to get that security hole fixed they flung a firmware update out just to fix it without testing it and gave the community holes that DID allow the flash memory to be changed, and they continued to do this firmware after firmware until they just stopped and actually FIXED the holes AND tested the updates, but because they rushed things and didnt do the testing is why the psp got so out of hand in terms of being hacked.
and their doing the same thing with the psp. instead of designing a new psp thats better in every way they keep making marginal improvements and releasing that every year, giving people the sense that the new versions are significantly better when their not, making those who purchased psp's feel like they wasted their money and potential new customers feeling like they will waste their money if they buy now.
if sony wants to make the psp sell better the first thing they need to do is open the system up to homebrew games, something they promised it would be capable of from the beginning. that alone would kill a good portion of those with hacked psp's, making them upgrade to the latest official firmware with not chance to go back to custom firmware. and of course they need to market the system and its games better than they do. and of course dropping the price of games to $30 instead of $40 would help as well, because $40 IS a lot of money to pay for a portable game that probably wont last half as long as a retail pc/console game.
but i digress. i believe it hasant died. i think that they system had a lot of potential if sony had had a lot of the features they promised back before they system was released in 2005, but over the years people have become aware of the fact that its pretty much an overhyped handheld and have become less receptive of it. theyve also shot themselves in the foot with constant releases of marginal upgrades that have confused and in some cases angred existing and potential customers and their marketing is pretty much non-existent these days.