Sony ships 8.4 million PSPs in FY06
Annual hardware shipments are down, but PSP's software tie-ratio is up to four per console
Considering the amount of time we spend discussing whether PSP is:
1) a success,
2) a failed experiment that might still work,
3) the second most beautiful piece of handheld consumer electronics ever created,
4) a busted flush;
it's always striking to get Sony's opinion on how it feels its first portable gaming system is performing.
One angle was given by the company's investor report for the period from April 2006 to March 2007 (its 2006 financial year).
The headline news wasn't that impressive. Sony shipped 8.36 million pieces of PSP hardware, whereas in the 12 months previous it had shipped 14.06 million units. Still, adding up three years of sales, including 2.97 million in year one, means Sony has manufactured (and presumably almost sold) over 25 million PSPs in total, which is impressive, even compared to Nintendo's 40 million DSs, as it consists of well over a third of all handheld gaming hardware sales – a market that before PSP had been a Nintendo monopoly for a decade. Of course, the other factor in Sony's favour is the difference in cost, with DS Lite retailing at around £100, while even thanks to a recent price cut, PSP costs £130.
In terms of PSP game sales, Sony sold 54.1 million UMD games in FY2006, up from 41.8 million in the previous year. This works out at a lifetime tie-ratio (total software shipped divided by total hardware shipped) of over four games per PSP, which while not comparable with the ratio of six or seven games you'd expect for a mature home console such as PlayStation 2, remains pretty good.
But as we all know, the issue with PSP is how Sony will market it in future. In terms of dry numbers, the company predicts it will ship nine million units between April 2007 and March 2008. It's not a huge increase on FY06, which suggests Sony doesn't expect the much-rumoured forthcoming redesign to make a massive difference to annual sales.
Still having spoken to people who know about such things, we think there's plenty more significant PSP activity still to come, especially when it starts to get decent interactivity with PlayStation 3 and Sony's online infrastructure – the PlayStation Network and PlayStation Store.
So keep it locked down to Pocket Gamer for all the breaking news.
