14 DAY TRIAL // The PlayStation Portable received a lot of attention from Sony this year, with a lot of promotions and special offers, but that didn't lead to an increase in total sales. According to the financial report for the April-September period, the company revealed that the PSP sold less than it had done the past year. In the same April-September period but in 2008, the handheld console sold 3.2 million units, 200 thousand more than it moved this year. The figures don't account for the PSP Go that Sony launched in North America and Europe on October 1 and in Japan on November 1.
An official report on its new console wasn't provided by Sony, but it is not the only one that keeps track of the numbers going around in its company. Stat-tracking firm Enterbrain did its own counting and, apparently, it came out with an exact number for the performance of the PSP Go in Japan.
Japanese gaming news site Andria Sang reports that Sony's latest platform sold 28,275 units in its first day. The $250 console was launched with several retail and downloadable treats, including MotorStorm Raging Ice, Persona 3 Portable and Dissidia Final Fantasy Universal Tuning.
What would seem as a decent sales figure for the first day is quickly ruined when compared with the one the Nintendo DSi pulled off when it was launched, one year ago. As Enterbrain reported last year, the ¥18,900 or $209 device sold 170,779 units in its first 48 hours. According to Media Create, in the last full week of October, the 19-25 period, the PSP-3000 sold 32,865 units in Japan.
As a lifetime achievement, marked by Andria Sang, the PSP has sold 2,797,180 units in Japan alone since it was launched in December 2004. As for the PSP Go, it may lack the UMD drive, but that's because it uses the digital content offered by the PlayStation Store. The handheld is also slimmer than the PSP-3000 and has a built-in, 16GB flash memory.