James Delahunty
30 Jan 2007 18:19
The demand for Sony's PlayStation Portable (PSP) console and the PlayStation 2 (PS2) console reportedly dropped quite dramatically in the 2006 holiday season. There was a 71.7% drop in PSP shipments over the quarter and a drop of 23.3% for PS2 shipments worldwide. While these drops were becoming apparent, Sony was focusing a lot of energy airlifting PlayStation 3 (PS3) consoles to North America.
While Sony did manage to ship 1.83 million PS3 units before the end of the year, it is important to remember the difference between shipments and sales. Sony's figures seem to mirror a Microsoft warning last week about a global softening in demand especially for video games.
Sony knows that it will receive a loss immediately on the sales of PS3 console, due to the high manufacturing costs involved. However, the company had hoped to soften that loss a bit by reducing the price of the PS2 console and through a promotional campaign. However, now demand also seems to be falling for the PSP console at a time when the Nintendo DS is doing very well.
Source:
Betanews