PSP is First Portable To Top Nintendo in a Major Market for a Year
by Jacob Mazel, posted on 07 January 2011 / 3,978 Views
After checking historical data, VGC can confirm that 2010 was the first time a rival portable system beat all Nintendo portable(s) in Japan or any other market since Nintendo has been making DS, GBA, GB, and Game & Watch devices. In 2005, Sony's PSP outsold Nintendo's DS in the USA and the Americas, by about 1.15m units, although the still vibrant GBA outsold both in the year. Thus, Nintendo still effectively led the portable market.
In Japan, Sony sold 2.90m PSPs in 2010, while Nintendo sold 2.88m DS systems. Worldwide, DS easily triumpthed over the PSP once more in 2010. Nonetheless, Sony is the first company to ever beat Nintendo in the Japanese portable market over an entire year. Sony is also the first company to see its portable system(s) outsell all Nintendo portable systems in a major gaming region.
Trends have been strange for both devices. DS took off in Japan first, while it still looked like it might fail in the West before growing for years in the West to record levels. PSP took off in the West, but collapsed in 2009 - 2010 particularly for software, just as it was really taking off in Japan.
PSP Americas PSP Japan DS Americas DS Japan
2004 n/a 0.47m 1.46m 1.39m
2005 4.07m 2.22m 2.93m 4.23m
2006 3.43m 1.86m 5.73m 8.40m
2007 4.17m 3.06m 9.93m 7.21m
2008 4.52m 3.80m 11.68m 4.26m
2009 2.98m 2.28m 12.11m 4.00m
2010 2.27m 2.90m 9.94m 2.88m
Essentially, we've gone from 2004, when DS beat PSP 3:1 in Japan to 2010 where DS has only a 2:1 lifetime edge in the country, and where sales were 1:1 for the year, slightly in favor of PSP. In the Americas, PSP went from beating DS 7:5 in 2005, to 2009-2010, where DS has beaten PSP by over 4:1 each year, with lifetime DS sales at 5:2 in favor DS. Essentially, launch year trends have reversed in both territories by huge amounts - Japan over the lifetime of the two devices has moved 50% in favor of PSP (DS is ahead 2:1, not 3:1 as 2004 figures suggested, or 9:2 as 2006 figures suggested), while the Americas has moved in favor of DS by a much larger volume - 3.5x fold or so from 2005 figures to lifetime sales. EMEAA in contrast, has favored DS over PSP each year, and has thus been far more stable than the other regions.
Still, its important to think about the Japanese shift, as 3DS and PSP2 will likely be designed around the gradual erosion of the early, but absolute DS dominance (9:2 over PSP in 2006) in Japan that has since dropped to 1:1.
Contact VGChartz at jmazel@vgchartz.com
