PSP Going Down...Sooner Than Expected?

Thanks to a post by Bluelight of Digital Share forums, the latest Japanese hardware and software game sales. In this post I shall focus on the handheld industry only, the seperate handheld console war between Sony and Nintendo.

Here are the latest Japanese handheld statistics:

Nintendo DS 132,012
PlayStation Portable 51,196
GB micro 7,594
GBA SP 5,709
Game Boy Advance 241

These numbers are presented in a pie chart below:



As you can see, the Nintendo and Sony handheld war are currently giving 37 to 13 ratio respectively. Nintendo are dominating with a huge 74% of the total handheld market (PSP 26%). This was thanks to the recent release of Animal Crossing, an inteactive simulator game which supports Nintendo's Wi-Fi play.

On top of this great news, Mario Kart DS, also Wi-Fi supported, will be launching next week to Japanese gamers. This release will surely boost DS sales even futher, just like it did in Australia and the U.S. Aussies were greeted by the highly anticipated DS title, along with a $199.95 bundle, saving a gamer $50 if bought seperatly (EB games are even selling the bundle for $188 now). In the U.S, 112,000 Mario Kart DS games were sold in the first week, and 45% of MKDS owners have played online.

The next major DS release will occur a month or two afterwards, the launching of Metroid Prime Hunters. also supporting wireless online play, the game will also sport the release of Nintendo's Wi-Fi adaptor to retailers.

So, the future looks bright for the Developer's System, though not so well for the sleek Micro. The GB Micro has been dropped slowely in sales since its release. In its first week, the Micro sold a whopping ~149,000 units, doubling DS sales for a week. now it has almost dropped as low as the GBA SP, tohugh still enough to stay in the market, and effective in its job as Nintendo's "side" or "topoff" console.

Btw, regarding the title of this post...
I deliberately chose the words in the title to provoke Sony fanboys :P, it is not entirely true. If it makes any PSP fans feel better, the DS has been beating it in sales for MONTHS, it taking about 26% of the handheld market is no news :).