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After a strong start and a few years of latent potential as a portable multimedia device, the PSP is being abandoned by third parties.
After a strong start and a decent 2007, the PSP has lost its luster with third party developers, Edge Magazine has found, and is quietly being abandoned in favor of more lucrative projects.
The details of their findings were presented in a four-page analysis of the PSP's software and hardware sales for the past three years, beginning with the release of the first PSP iteration in 2005. The bad news is the drop off in software and hardware sales, title exclusivity and third party support have been dramatic. The good news? There's always Monster Hunter and Japan, where the handheld enjoyed modest success in 2008, and even edged out the market leading Nintendo DS for a few cycles earlier this year.
But beyond that it's pretty much doom and gloom for Sony's multi-faceted game playing, music pumping, video showing machine. Even Sony itself has shifted resources away from the portable, with first party PSP releases dropping significantly in 2007, before rising to modest 2005 levels in the first half of 2008.
Taken together with recent third party criticisms made by Sony Worldwide Studios boss Shuhei Yoshida, that last point is particularly troublesome. If you'll remember, Yoshida said third parties shunning the PSP were a "disappointment." In light of Edge's findings, perhaps Sony would be wise to take some of their own medicine.
"The PS3's birthing pains may have necessitated a larger decrease in SCE releases than was comfortable, but games like God of War: Chains of Olympus and Resistance: Retribution are still big deals. With games like these, Sony is trying to show third parties that big IP does work on the handheld PlayStation. But will the publishers agree? They haven't seemed to yet," wrote Edge columnist Joe Keiser.
Edge found that even blockbuster brands like Grand Theft Auto haven't been enough to sustain PSP third party development. In fact, the two major GTA releases for the PSP have actually mirrored the system's overall health. GTA: Liberty City Stories is the best-selling PSP title, with 1.7 million sales to the end of 2007, but the follow-up Vice City Stories floundered, managing only 700,000 in its first year.
"Taken individually, these numbers look pretty good. But taken together, they smack of disaster; how is it that the hottest franchise in gaming managed to shed nearly 60 percent of its sales from one iteration to the next?," wrote Keiser.
Indeed, these kinds of numbers are what may be scaring third parties off to other systems. If GTA can't sell on the PSP, Keiser opines, then what will?
Bottom line is that while PSP hardware sales remain moderately healthy, software sales languish. People often joke about other consoles gathering dust these days, but it very well may be the PSP, once a bright spot in the Sony lineup, that is being forgotten.
On that sour note, who out there still keeps the PSP at their side, and what are you playing?
