PSP vs DS
There’s an interesting set of statistics on GameDaily today regarding the performance of DS and PSP in Japan and US.
I charted this data up in Excel to see what conclusions could be drawn. Here’s a comparison of top ten Japanese PSP and DS titles:
And a comparison of top ten US PSP and DS titles:
The first thing you notice is that the DS is trompling the PSP in Japan, at least in terms of software sales for the top ten titles.
However, in the US, the PSP and DS software sales are virtually neck and neck aside from the outstanding performance of Super Mario 64 DS – a killer app if ever there was one! (It should be noted that DS had a five month lead on PSP in the US.)
Two questions:
1. Why is the DS doing so much better than the PSP in Japan?
2. What will be the killer app for PSP in the US?
Innnteresting.
No idea, but here are some guesses:
1) Could be that Japanese are more sensitive to the higher price point, but I don’t think think that’s it. More likely a combo of (a) Nintendo has strong brand cred for bringing good games to market and (b) they’ve done some interesting and unique games for the platform.
2) Not sure, but it will be something unique to the platform. The key is: What game works on a PSP that *doesnt* work on a PS2 or DS? Combo of the better graphics (better than DS) with the mobile & multiplayer aspect?
Of course, my answer for (2) *should* be “THERE WON’T BE ONE! YOUR PLATFORM WILL DIE A HORRIBLE AND PAINFUL DEATH!” 🙂
Oh god, the virus seems to spread fast once you reach Redmond. I’m so sorry.
🙂
One word: Nintendogs