Sony Celebrate PSP Success News

Sony today announced that global shipments of the PSP have passed the 10 million mark, making it the fastest penetration of all previous Playstation formats.

Despite waiting for over 8 months to get the handheld Europeans have taken quickly to the PSP with 2.53 million units shipped to date. Shipments in North America lead the way with 4.47 million units, whilst the PSP has shifted 3.00 million units across Japan. The figure puts Sony on course to shift the 12 million units expected by the end of the year, rising to 15 million by March 31st 2006.

Shipments of PSP Game software has reached 19.6 million units with 183 titles available on the market. Surprisingly the UMD Movie has firmly positioned itself as a viable new format, with over 15 million shipments in the 10 months since the PSP first arrived on the scene. These figures however do reveal a lack of attach rates, averaging out to two games per user and a similar amount for UMD Movies. On the gameâ??s front the lack of distinctive titles has been blamed with gamers criticising the sheer amount of PS2 ports, however UMD Movies were never expected to rival the size of peopleâ??s DVD collections.

Sony promised to continue developing the PSP with further firmware updates and pledged new accessories to expand game, movies and music on the format.

To compare the most recent data for the Nintendo DS by the end of June 2005 stands at 6.65 million units, likely keeping the two formats neck and neck in the handheld battle - and not to leave anyone out, Tiger Telematic release the Gizmondo across North America today with global shipments currently unknown.

AMMENDMENT

One crucial mistake highlighted by some vocal readers is worth pointing out. The figures DO represent the number of units shipped and not sold as wrongly indicated in one particular sentence; the rest of the article and even the summary should have given enough of a clue as to what they represent but we apologise to any confusion amongst some readers...