Because it’s nearly Christmas, let’s stop messing around and descend into open criticism of another website. It’s what Jesus would have wanted.
MCV is a respected UK trade publication, but this news item about Sony expecting to sell 1 million PSPs really is quite a piece of work.
The fact is that the PSP has sold quite well this year. Very well, even. But the Nintendo DS – the only other current handheld – has sold better. With the facts out of the way, let’s spin!
There are some wonderful quotes from Sony UK’s Kevin Jowett, which MCV utterly fails to hold in any sort of critical light. “People mention us in the same breath as DS because we’re both handheld products, but we’re actually going after very different markets.” Very different? Sod off. Slightly different? Maybe. If anything, Sony are probably going for a subset of Nintendo’s target market.
“We’ve put in just under £300 million of turnover at retail with PSP because we’re such a boys console and we’ve hit the mark with older gamers.” Firstly, without any sort of comparison, the figure of £300 million means absolutely nothing. And secondly, the rest of that statement means absolutely nothing.
MCV explains that the PSP has fallen back a bit since launching due to the DS and the fact that no-one wants to buy UMD movies. True. And that 2006 has been “the Year Of The Handheld”. Correct: the Nintendo DS has been the year’s best selling console, with the PSP second.
But then, out of nowhere: “PSP has been a dominant force”. Well, no. It hasn’t. The Nintendo DS has been dominant. Clearly. The PSP has sold well. But it hasn’t dominated anything. Saying that it has dominated the Xbox 360, for example, would be absurd. If the PSP and Nintendo DS have “very different markets”, then PSP and Xbox 360 have very, very, very different markets.