PSP Edging DS in Japanese Sales War

Long road to nowhere with the DS...

This was bound to happen eventually.

I'm still all for the Ninty/Sony co-op, as at the moment I'd be surprised to see Nintendo still in hardware in 10 years.

I think the Revolution is their last chance in the home market. The handheld market is still open, but the signs are as many predicted. If PSP dominates DS worldwide, they'll need something inspirational for the next generation.

Playstation Revolution ? :)

They ought to team up really, Micro$oft will keep going till they've crushed them both.
It's certainly in the interest of Japan not to let these yanks get too big a foothold.

yeah, seems likely, they cant afford to come trailing in 3rd place.




they're both very different haldhelds, with very different purposes, but I'm sure the 'true' gameboy follow-up will come along a lot sooner if things are going badly for DS.

That's exactly what I think. It would make sense for Japanese gaming and commerical sense for the two companies to enter a partnership.

As you say, M$ has far too much finance. It can afford to keep footing losses generation after generation to infinitiy.

An interesting piece of news this is, but take it all with a pinch of salt. Come back in six months to a year and we will have a much better picture of things

Either way I'm glad both are doing okay.

This number means little. Nintendo sold over 1.7 milllion Nintendo DS's in Japan in December (1.3 million in the US), so Sony catching up 10,000 in a week is no big deal. It is just the people who want both and already have a DS making their PSP purchase. It will take Sony almost three years to catch up at this rate.

There is no logical premise for this assertion.

In a country with a population exceeding 127 million, with an installed user base of 1.7million DSs, over 86% of the population do not own a DS.

However, If we assume that only 5% of the total population is interested in owning a handheld console (this is a VERY low estimate), that still leaves a potential market of 6,350,000. So there is a 73.2% probability that any PSP buyer is NOT a DS owner.

Add to this the fact that the two appeal to a significantly different demographic, and that percentage increases proportionately.



You are looking at the current sales as if they represent a flat rate - a fixed "speed" of sales. But they do not, Sony's move from lower sales to higher sales represents an acceleration. Without a sufficiently large sample of data, you cannot predict whether that acceleration is at early or late phase. Though, given the comparatively recent launch, and early supply problems, it is reasonable to extrapolate that it is at early or mid phase. DS, however, is beginning to fall into its stable or plateau sales phase.

It is reasonable to expect, therefore that PSP sales will not continue to outrank DS sales by a mere 10,000 per week, but that they will increase this margin, and thus reduce your predicted three years time to overhaul total DS sales.

I personally think that by Christmas 2005, PSP will have outsold DS in all regions.

If anyone think PSP going to outsell DS, have to think it haven't came out in Europe or In the land down under. I'm not saying PSP can't out sell it but, PSP going to have it's hands full. One more thing why would anybody want a PSP it has games people doesn't really want to play, no movies for the PSP avaliable so far, and PSP is just a IPOd replacement that plays games, movies, and has a rechargeable battery.

Sorry, did you say something? I was a little distracted...

I don't understand. You're saying that the PSP isn't out in these regions, which is true, but the DS isn't either. Furthermore, Australia's not a huge sales hotbed and Europe's ratio of Game Boy Advance sales to Playstation 2 sales is lower than the other two major regions (thus indicating a comparative lack of interest in handheld gaming, and given the performance of the Gamecube you could probably say Europe's not a good Nintendo territory on the whole).


Don't know about you, but I'm particularly eager to get my hands on Ridge Racers, Mercury, Lumines and Wipeout Pure. These games are:

- A version of a popular racing series (series also to appear on DS)
- A game with an innovative control system
- An odd puzzle game
- A future racer

Now, none of these concepts seem drastically different to what Nintendo's system is offering (or in the case of Wipeout Pure, is likely to offer via F-Zero). The logic goes that if nobody will want to play these, nobody will want to play their DS equivalents.

Judging a system by it's early line-up isn't a wise idea anyway - the PS2's was generally considered poor (save for SSX and Timesplitters). Look at the DS' launch line-up in the US - a mere two interesting games in Super Mario 64 DS and Feel the Magic.

I think you answered your own question though. The PSP plays games at a quality comparable to today's consoles, but it does all that other stuff as well. That's why people want it.

What NiktheGreek said. Plus iPod has a rechargable battery!

I don't understand. You're saying that the PSP isn't out in these regions, which is true, but the DS isn't either. Furthermore, Australia's not a huge sales hotbed and Europe's ratio of Game Boy Advance sales to Playstation 2 sales is lower than the other two major regions (thus indicating a comparative lack of interest in handheld gaming, and given the performance of the Gamecube you could probably say Europe's not a good Nintendo territory on the whole).

One more thing why would anybody want a PSP it has games people doesn't really want to play, no movies for the PSP avaliable so far, and PSP is just a IPOd replacement that plays games, movies, and has a rechargeable battery.

Don't know about you, but I'm particularly eager to get my hands on Ridge Racers, Mercury, Lumines and Wipeout Pure. These games are:

- A version of a popular racing series (series also to appear on DS)
- A game with an innovative control system
- An odd puzzle game
- A future racer

Now, none of these concepts seem drastically different to what Nintendo's system is offering (or in the case of Wipeout Pure, is likely to offer via F-Zero). The logic goes that if nobody will want to play these, nobody will want to play their DS equivalents.

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I donagree with your first and second points. How on earth can you compare GBA to PS2. Both are popular enough and have huge sales in europe. GBA is no home console for a start and is not a dedicated 3D system and that's why comparing them is silly.

If you count GBA and GBASP however you might get a different result, either way you should really be comparing a home system to a hand held one (unless you wanna compare PS2 and PSP).

Plus, the DS has a rechargeable battery, putting it at both sides of the equation and making it a logical redundancy.

What we're interested in seeing here is how popular handheld gaming is in any given region, which we'll work out by comparing the most popular home console to the most popular handheld. We use this method because the regions do not have equal sales potential, thus making direct unit for unit sales comparisons pointless. As they're completely different (as you observe) people should have no issue buying both. Thus, a low ratio of GBA:PS2 sales probably means the region isn't as interested in handheld gaming as a region with a higher ratio.

The point? When replying to the original poster's "wait and see what happens in Europe and Australia" comment, I was merely advising them against taking this region as a major battleground because we're not as interested in handheld gaming on the whole.

Now for the evidence.

Playstation 2 worldwide sales figures (Jan 13th 2004)

- Japan (including Asia) 16.18 million units
- North America 29.26 million units
- Europe/PAL 24.56 million units

Game Boy Advance (and SP, so there's no confusion) worldwide sales figures (March 2004)

- Japan - 13.21 million units
- North America - 24.81 million units
- Other - 13.38 million units

Japan has a ratio of 0.82 GBA consoles sold for every PS2 sold (roughly 4 GBAs for every 5 PS2s). North America has a slightly higher ratio of 0.84 GBAs per PS2. Europe has a ratio of 0.55 GBAs for every PS2 sold. So, at least with regards to the current generation of systems, handheld gaming occupies a smaller share of the overall market in Europe than it does in the USA or Japan, meaning that the real battle will be fought off our shores unless the market significantly grows during this generation of handhelds.

Number crunching is fun?