It's pretty simple:
If you already have a bunch of PSP games you don't need backwards compatibility because you already have a PSP.
If you don't already own a PSP because nothing in the last 6 years convinced you to buy one then you still don't need backwards compatibility because the games don't interest you.
Pricing on the accessories was also addressed in the article, if you had bothered to read it.
From the update:
"Update: The 1 million includes Latin America (whatever small amount that is), and more importantly, it's sold to retail (not to consumers)."
It doesn't matter how many you ship to retail if nobody is buying it. Around here the shelves are bursting with Move units and games, it seems nobody is interested.
It would be good sales, if it were actually sales. Read it again:
"Sony's announcement that it has **shipped** 2.5 million..."
Shipped to retail != sold. They are sitting on retail shelves and in warehouses.
I guess you guys haven't been looking around and seen all the piles and piles of unsold Move stuff. Sony is shipping it and it's just sitting around.
This isn't the first time that Sony has tried to pass off shipped numbers instead of sold numbers and it's the very first game I warned people to watch out for now that the NPD isn't reporting units sold through at retail anymore. They have been playing that game since the PS2 days.
How many ...
There is simply no way there are THIRTY FIVE unannounced games between now and the end of the year.
He said 70 nee titles between now (June 15th) and the end of the year.
He's off by 1/2, not 10 and the point of mentioning 60 titles was that even if he were talking about the ENTIRE year (which he wasn't) he would still be wrong.
As of right now Sony is losing $40 on every PS3 sold and they aren't making that money back on software sales.
Hardware sales are down every month for the last 8 months compared to last year. People just aren't buying the PS3.
In order to spur sales they need to cut the price, but they can't do that with the current hardware. The only thing they can do is re-engineer the hardware, make it smaller and cheaper so they can cut the price (hopefully by around $100.)
A couple of points worth noting:
1) If installed base actually meant anything BOTH inFamous and Prototype would be selling multiple millions of copies. The fact that they're both selling less than 500,000 units at a time of year when there are no other big releases out speaks volumes.
2) It doesn't matter if Prototype is multiplatform or not. It sold more on the one platform we have numbers for.
3) Prototype PS3 didn't make the NPD top 10 which means it ...
I'll go slow so nobody gets hurt:
inFamous May numbers + June numbers = 368,600
Prototype June numbers alone, just for the 360 = 419,900
I feel safe in assuming that there were people who bought Prototype on the PS3 and PC as well which means the total number is EVEN HIGHER than 419,900.
See 419,900 is a bigger number than 368,600.
If they don't get their pricing in line it won't matter what does or does not get ported.
Nobody is going to spend $250 on a machine with a smaller screen that can't play existing games. If they want to position it as a premium device then they should do the following:
PSP 2000/3000 - $99.99
PSP Go! - $169.99
PSP Go! w/ 1 game - $199.99
I find this fascinating… because it means one thing:
If Sony is planning on doing the PS3 Slim and they are planning on cutting the price when it comes out they are keeping it secret from the public AND THEY HAVEN’T TOLD DEVELOPERS THIS EITHER.
Would it be so hard to have a back-room conference at E3 and tell all the developers (or even a select few developes, say EA and Activision) “Look, we know you’re concerned on price, after October that won’t be an issue anymor...
Everyone remember the rumors that the 360 was going to get an internal HD-DVD drive? Then it became "confirmed internal sources saying the 360 will get a Blu-Ray drive?"
Yeah, how'd that work out?
It would surprise me if price cuts weren't coming, it would also surprise me if there weren't a new PSP coming... but all the rumor mongering is just that... Don't get excited until there's official comment.
It's easy to correctly predict a price drop when you make the same prediction every month. You're bound to be right one of those times.
Pachter also said that Sony would move their stock of 80GB PS3s from Europe to the US to clear them out, despite the fact that European units have different power and video standards.
Don't get me wrong, if you don't already own a PSP then there is PLENTY of content to keep you busy. Off the top of my head, the Wipeout games, the first Untold Legends game, Phantasy Star Portable, more jrpgs than you can shake a stick at.
What concerns me is the lack of UPCOMING games. It feels more the platform is winding down rather than ramping up.
Uh - That would be NEW games I'm talking about, not used games.
I actually own plenty of PSP titles, somewhere around 40 of them or so. I actually bought two copies of several for local play between my 1000 and 2000.
Seriously, Nintendo has more or less proven themselves to be E3 proof. Their audience not only doesn't care about such media shows, most likely they aren't even aware things like E3 exist.
In the end, Nintendo is the market leader, their 20 million unit lead world-wide is more or less bullet-proof.
Good/Bad/Indifferent it doesn't matter how their E3 show turns out.
@doctorstrange
The way I found exclusives vs. multiplatform is pretty easy. Going to Metacritic you pull a list of all PS3 games and Xbox 360 games and paste them into Excel.
You then use the =countif() function and compare the list of Xbox games to each individual PS3 title. If there's a duplicate it returns a "1", if it's unique it returns a "0". You then check this by doing the same thing going the other way, the numbers should match.
<...
At E3 Sony gave the impression that they had given up on the Vita before it even had a chance to get started. There's a reason it's selling less than 50k per month and it's not the fault of the hardware or the software.