Some say piracy. That ignores the fact that the DS is just as pirated and yet seems unaffected.
Some say the PSPGo. That ignores the fact that while the PSP outsold the DS in its first year on the back of a truly extraordinary amount of hype and deliberately one-sided coverage, the DS quickly recovered and began outselling it the next year. The PSP was on a downward slope long before the PSPGo was announced.
The fact is some people were clearly disappointed the year after launch. The PSP has a very low tie-in, even by portable standards, which are always poor compared to home systems. That isn't the result of piracy, its the result of people not being that interested in what they bought. I suspect because too many of the games were slightly gimped console ports with disappointing loading times, missing features, awkward controls, and the novelty of the pretty graphics on a handheld device quickly dissapated when people knew what to expect.
With all that said, however, it is unfair to say America gave up on the PSP. It is the best selling handheld without a Nintendo name on its label. People greatly underestimated how difficult it was going to be to unseat Nintendo. They ignored how masterful a developer Nintendo is just as they so often do, and they ignored the much cheaper price tag that didn't correspond to a gap in quality software. Nintendo clearly put thought into making something that was fun to play around with when it was in your hands, Sony was not so inventive. Still, Sony has talented developers and they were able to put out a steady enough stream of titles to keep the PSP competitive. It has plenty of third party relationships and its initial sales meant the cost of development remained a system where money could be made, so the PSP still gets plenty of good software. In my opinion the software actually began to improve as the sales began to go down sadly. Still, it is a successful system, even in America where it's sold over 21 million, and sold several million more than the PS3 at this point in America for that matter. It's a shame Americans didn't stay excited for it a little longer, because it would have provided motivation for there to be more localizations. And if even half of the Japan only titles had been localized it would have been a much, much better contender with the DS. Not since the Sega Saturn has there been so much quality software shutoff from America. The DS has its own massive share of quality Japan only software, but not quite on the scale of the PSP.
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