Sony PSP: biggest UK console launch to date

While the 185,000 figure is estimated, since ChartTrack doesn't cover 100% of the UK market in its analysis, the figures are based on the sales as reported by the stores in question.

By comparison, using the same analysis methodology, ChartTrack reported the DS's lauch weekend hardware sales at 87,000.

Also they report the 24 games avaialble on day one for the PSP was the largest number available for any console.

Here's another couple of takes on the story from MCV and ChartTrack themselves.

I agree.
ChartTrack seemingly doesn't count the fact that the PSP had an extra day on sale compared to PSP. Then that they don't cover most of the market. Then that SCEE claimed to only have 150,000 available. Numbers don't add up. Nintendo isn't too impressed for sure!

I'm not at all surprised by PSP sales since it's nine months late to us. They'll be a lot of people wanting one but it hasn't sold out yet.

The noose is already closing and counting down to the 360 launch so time and sales will tell a story of PSP but is it one you can believe or want to hear, Sony fraulien?

Good luck to Sony anyway, they don't deserve it but they will definitiely need it.

The difference between hardware figures is more than one days sales for either system at launch, so the PSP still had a bigger launch.


Chart track don't cover the whole market, sure, but they didn't when DS launched either. They estimate the %age of the market they do cover and then use that to arrive at their estimated sales.

When you look at their Retail Panel they do seem to have a good handle on things. They claim 90% of the UK market for software, I assume the hardware figures are similar.


Day one ship-in was estimated at 150,00 wasn't it? Anybody get re-supplied on Friday or Saturday? I know the people I spoke to in Argos expected daily shipments. Most people were looking at much longer, but that could have been a typical Sony under-estimate to hype the launch thing. SO could the 150K figure come to that.


Hardly ever do for some reason.

Thing is, ChartTrack get actual figures from the retailers' stock systems, so they should have accurate figures to base their estimates on. The only fudge should be in estimating the coverage of the figures they get.


I'll bet, the DS launch paled in comparison to the PSP in the UK.

What remains to be seen is which system will keep the sales up in the long term. If JP and US are to be used as examples, the PSP will tail off and the DS will take over.

However, we're coming up to Christmas and the PSP has mind share now due to the TV and general media coverage of the launch. Also, European PSP owners shouldn't have to wait as long for newer games as JP and US owners did since the development processes should be further along by the six bloody month we had to wait.

Nintendo have the Micro up their sleeves, but that's just a diversion. Then there's the 360 launch, that will be the big battler for the Christmas money.

It's gonna be a good one this year!

i bet after a month they will put it in their drawers rarely to be played again hehe like mine..:(

185,000 sounds like a lot compared the to DS's 87,000, but really doesn't seem like a lot over all. Didn't the DS recently have a 110,000 week in Japan, after months and months of it being out? I dunno, maybe it's a lot, but doesn't sound ridiculously impressive to me. However, keep in mind I'm from America so it's probable my ideas of numbers are skewed differently than yours.

Well you have to bear in mind that the UK has just over 1/5 of the population of the US. That may have an affect on your perception of the figures.

I dunno what percentages of those populations are gamers, but you'd have to think there would be a similar percentage in each country.


Yeah first week of August they sold 103,095 DSs in Japan. Japan has 2.1 times as many people as the UK, but they seem to have a higher percentage of gamers than either the UK or the US.

Even if the %age of the population that are gamers is the same as in the UK, that 103K sales figure is equivalent to a 49K one in the UK.

Mind you the DS launched with sales of 468,883 in JP, which is equivalent to 223,277 in the UK (using 2.1 as the factor). Does that mean that Japan has 2.6 times as many gamers as the UK? Or does it reflect that Japan has a more "out and about" population than the UK and are more likely to buy a handheld?

For comparison the PSP launched with sales of 160,019 in Japan, equivalent to 76,199 with our JP-UK ratio of 2.1. Does that mean the PSP is 2.4 times as popular in the UK as in JP? Or does it just reflect the separation between the DS launch in Europe?


Relative population sizes are a good way to skew your perceptions of these things. In case you are interested, here are the estimated populations from the CIA for UK, US and JP.

UK 60,441,457
JP 127,417,244
US 295,734,134

And some comparisons between them.

JP = 2.1 * UK
US = 4.9 * UK
US = 2.3 * JP

To be honest I can see why it has sold so well over here: the glaring poipularity of Playstation.

In the UK a gamer isn't a "true gamer" without one, as many see it as where the games come from. It's the Source of Gaming in many circles, and has been since launch. Gaming was a bit of a child's gig over here until the PS1, which was the first console to really appeal to students and twenty-somethings. In honour of this, they will buy anything Playstation they can afford - which is why I still don't understand the non-release of a PAL PSX. I think, what with the iMac/iPod/Plasma Screen crowd over here, it really wouyld have sold well, and especially due to the lack of a UK TiVo bar Sky+.

So, the PSP. It has been hyped in EDGE, Gamesmaster and the now seemingly-dead CVG (what happened there? It was far better than Gamesmaster, well written, good reviews and a long pedigree...) since announcement. It has been mentioned in a sideways manner by a lot of US celebrities on MTV and in music magazines such as NME, Q and Kerrang as what they do in their spare time. In fact, the only dissenting voice is Games™ - the voice of the people who'd love to read EDGE was it not so damn obvious it's made by Future Publishing. All the boxes had already been checked, and a major rollout was inevitable.

Having seen the buying drought up here, though, I can't help but feel they used the wrong marketing tools; to hook the people up here who would have but didn't they needed to be all over the soaps. Being in the Sun et al being hyped as "the biggest launch of a games machine ever" is all well and good, but these people don't have masses of cash just lying about. To get them to part with it takes showing them the possibilities, and demo machines weren't in shops early enough thanks to Sony's crackdown on imports.

So, it should have been even higher. The burberry Honda Civic crowd didn't bite; they had a PS1, and any time spent out of the house is in their car where they can't play. Had it been cheaper, like the DS was, they would have - as the sellout of that handheld showed up here...

You've mentioned this before Joji, but I still don't think Xbox 360 will have the slightest impact on PSP sales. I mean, when Panasonic launches a new toaster, it doesn't affect Samsung TV sales, does it?

PSP and Xbox360 are totally different products, aiming for totally different market spaces.

I agree, we in the UK have a "gaming == PlayStation" attitude pushed down our throats from the media in general.

However, given that attitude, I would have expected Wipeout Pure to have topped the charts, not Ridge Racer.

Anyone here have a PSP?

I do, i really think it was over hyped badly!..I'm not the person to listen to music on watch the movies on the go..I only bought mine for Emulation on the go..i really wish they would release decent rpgs for it...

all the games i want to play are japan like breath of fire 3 and tales of eternia...but i already have them for psx...

Just to correctg you there, Tyrion, the figures come from retailer's EPoS systems, so it's a measure of sell-through, not sell-in.


???

You're laughing about wasting a not insubstantial amount of money? How odd.

noooo im ever mad.....its alone in my drawer with its black cover on

that "hehe" was a sad hehe

Stick it on eBay. They're still fetching a reasonable amount.

I wasn't sure whether they got the info directly from the EPoS systems or from the stock control systems that track both sell-in and sell-through. I know some of the sales reports I've seen as part of developing our sales tracking application have sell-in figures on there too, I assumed that ChartTrack saw the same reports I've seen.

Then again, I should have just checked the methodolody section on their website. EPoS it is.