Sony: The PSP Go Was Kind of An Experiment

The PSP Go wasn't a success. Sony is giving away free games to try and is more than happy to admit it's an effort to boost sales. This week the company is offering a little insight into reasoning behind the launch of the handheld console.

Amid speculation that Sony will launch a PSP2 at E3 next week, MCVUK asked SCEE president and CEO Andrew House about the success and sales of the PSP Go. House replied that one of the reasons the PSP Go was launched was to see what customers really wanted and because of this, the success can't be measured in sales.

"It was introduced in a mature lifecycle to learn more about what the consumer wanted and we’ve definitely learnt a lot. Is that measured by success in sales? I don’t think it is. One of the reasons we launched PSPgo was to understand where that consumer behaviour was going. We were getting signals from consumers that this was the kind of device that they wanted. But we need to recognise that consumers like their packaged media library."

Though House said it was only one of the reasons for the PSP Go, designing, producing and marketing a product just to see what people want seems like a very expensive way to do market research. That said, at least Sony learned something from the whole thing. Let's hope those lessons transfer to the PSP2!

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4

tearlach2 , June 10, 2010 7:35 AM

rooketDear Sony,Just because fanboys draw up mock up photos of consoles does not mean that the console manufacturer ever copycats it and releases it as a product. Look how many cool Nintendo DS fan made mock ups are out there and Nintendo doesn't pay attention to them. You hire a designer and pay him to put out a product. This is why the PSP1000 sold so well. It was your own unique design.P.S. you already should understand that people also like to modify their device and the PSP Go failed due to the fact that you strong armed it like the PS3 which is also failing.

That is a truly absurd claim. Are you saying that the PSPgo and PS3 are unlike other consoles in this way (they aren't), and that this made up difference is the reason Sony's sales aren't as strong as Microsoft's?
3

overclockingrocks , June 10, 2010 5:26 AM

The PSP Go's only failing IMHO was lack of a UMD drive other than that it was a nice little handheld. Has a nice screen built in 16GB memory etc. same form factor with a UMD drive would sell like hotcakes
2

BulkZerker , June 10, 2010 11:39 AM

rocky1234PSPgo failed simply because of the lack of UMD drive it took away the ability for users to play their already owned games from the past PSP's.

Agreed, no way to download a game you already own onto the system is bogus. They really needed to implement a way to do that. Though I don't see a owner of a PSP-1/2/3000 going out to buy anything other than a PSP2.

rocky1234 Physical Media storage (screw the download only concept)

So that 16 gigs of onboard memory don't count? Had they gone the way of Download only from the getgo, and offered a way for a person to DL a copy of a game from say gamestop on a local private network or at the store it would have worked just fine. (Buy the game, wait 5 min, leave the store with the game freshly loaded into your system)

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Sony: The PSP Go Was Kind of An Experiment

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