The Platstation Portable (PSP) which has launched on September 1st in the UK has become the UK's best selling console launch ever, selling about 185,000 units within the first week of its UK launch. The last best seller was the Nintendo DS, which was launched earlier this year and had sold 87,000 units during first week of its launch.
Both the PSP and Nintendo DS are competing against each other and so far the Nintendo DS has managed to sell more units in its first few weeks than the PSP in the US, despite the PSP having a better initial sales peak. In Japan, the PSP is not doing as well with an analyst mentioning that Nintendo DS sales in the Japan exceeded both PSP and Playstation 2 sales combined.
While the PSP has the advantage of being able to play movies using its proprietary UMD optical disc format, so far the Nintendo DS sales seem to be pushed due to its killer application Nintendogs, which is currently one of the US's best selling titles. Both offer MP3 audio and MPEG4 video playback capabilities in an aim to boost sales.
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The UK launch of the PSP, the third region it's become available in after Japan and North America, is also boding well for its software sales. As in the US, the unit launched with 24 available games, and 20 of those cracked the top 40 all-format software sales charts (figures include sales of titles across all platforms), with nine in the top 10. Ridge Racer took home the number one spot, Wipeout Pure raced into the number three spot, followed by Virtual Tennis: World Tour and Metal Gear Acid at slots four and five, respectively. Some more info can be read here. |
It looks like Sony has done a good job with its UK
launch, although it will be interesting to see if they can sustain its high sales rate. So far, while Sony is well known for game consoles, until recently, Nintendo lead the market when it came to handheld consoles such as its Gameboy series up until now.
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Source: GAMESPOT News
