PSP Go now $200

This week, Sony announced that it was cutting the price of the PSP Go, at a press event in Tokyo covered by Reuters. Now, US retailers are listing the UMD-free handheld's price as just $200, a $50 drop from its previous, and initial, cost.

The new price point makes the PSP Go just $30 more expensive than the PSP-3000, which does play UMD-based games. Launched in October 2009, the portable has also been discounted in Japan, where the price went from ¥26,800 ($328) to ¥16,800 ($206) as of Tuesday. The drop comes just two weeks after it was first rumored by a retailer leak from a US Armed Forces supply depot.

After being unveiled with great fanfare--and a colossal leak--at the 2009 Electronic Entertainment Expo, the PSP Go has not been the runaway hit Sony hoped it would be. Though US sales figures for the handheld have never been released by the NPD Group, Japanese retail-tracking firm Media Create breaks out sales of the handheld each week. In almost every instance, the portable finishes dead last on the hardware chart, selling just 1,590 units in the island nation during the week of October 11-17, compared to 37,127 PSP-3000s.