PSP sales outpace the DS in Japan

[wraggster]

According to Enterbrain Inc., publisher of Famitsu and other game magazines in Japan, sales of the Sony PSP have begun to outpace those of the Nintendo DS.



According to independent research conducted by Enterbrain, Sony's PSP bested Nintendo in handheld console sales in both February and March of this year.

The most popular handheld in Japan is still the Nintendo DS. However, the DS sold an impressive 1.09 million units during December, a total that Sony has only just now reached after four months of sales.

The PSP, suffering from production delays, sold only 330,000 units in December. The DS continued to beat the PSP in January, selling 450,000 units to the PSP's 360,000 units.

But the tables turned in February, when 195,000 PSP units were sold, edging out 121,000 DS units. PSP sales increased by a small margin in March, reaching 202,000 units, and DS sales also increased, reaching 136,000 units.

While these new numbers are encouraging for Sony, the PSP still lags behind the DS in overall penetration: Japanese consumers currently own 1.09 million PSPs and 1.8 million DSes.

[psplover]

Welcome to not a Suprise. Nintendo is flashing downwards. It's not the quality of there product its that Nintendo just can't get support after having 2 failed systems. N64 was a major hit to there reputation with its pathetic selection of games.

[aseddon130]

no way, the N64 is and always was a legend - i bought another one a few week back, fookin legends ...

but, like you said, Nintendo are goin down. The GC was awful and only the Nintndo Fanboys only find them cool. I have yet still to see a game that will impress me on the DS (Goldeneye and Metriod Prime looks ok, but thats all) so unless they do somethin about the games that are going on the DS (port over the 'proper' goldeneye :D lol) then thats it! GAME OVER!

i've always said, when compared with the PSP, the DS doesn't stand a chance! If the PSP sticks to the June release date (like the other thread suggests) then the DS is dead in Europe!

FOR ALL PPL WHO WILL (PROBABLY) SAY I AM A SONY FANBOY

(i really gave the GC a chance to prove me wrong with most of their 'exclusive' games, but they was just not good - even the Mario Sunshine wasnt too good and Metriod Prime was just boring and irritating ... so thats before you all say i am a Sony / MS Fanboy ) :D

[psplover]

Why is being a fan of a company that provides you with all the 3rd party games and a huge selection of quality titles a bad thing?

[ganon]

wtf metroid prime was easily one of the best games on the cube

[leggy]

Now let's not all argue - we know which one is better

[Darksaviour69]

this really does not tell much, at this stage it's the early adopters that are buy the DS and PSP, and its really neck to neck. also think of it this way, in feb and march the psp out sold the ds by about 70,000 so if that trend continues (considering the ds has a 710,000 lead at the mo) it will take the psp just over 10 months for it to over take it..... its a really interesting fight.... but at this very very early stage it seems to be more of a snes vs mega drive situation that a gameboy vs gamegear situation..

[Corpsical]

This report if true should be the nail in the coffin -


Originally posted on thedvdforums


Unlocking PSP's future

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The general perception of PSP games right now is that they look pretty good. Pretty damn good. You probably wouldn't be surprised if I told you that PSP games are going to look considerably better in the future. It stands to reason that over time, games look better and better across a console's lifespan as developers become more accustomed to the hardware and learn to exploit it more effectively. The first-generation games might put just as much strain on the system as the late-generation games, but the tangible improvements come from much more efficient coding. The console's capabilities don't improve, only the software does. Such is the case with all consoles.

What if I told you that PSP was different? What if I told you that as well as enjoying the benefits of steadily improving software development, the PSP would, at some stage in the future (and without any modification), become capable of a hardware performance increase of fifty percent? That would be somewhat more surprising, wouldn't it?

Well, that's what I'm telling you. At this year's busy GDC (Game Developers Conference) in San Francisco, lots of companies gave lots of presentations. On Friday the 11th of March, between midday and 1pm, Sony Computer Entertainment America staged four different presentations simultaneously. Mark DeLoura, SCEA's manager of developer relations, delivered one of them: a rather dry and technical presentation called "PSP Advanced Software Overview". It seems that with so many talks vying for attention, this particular presentation may have slipped under the radar of the mainstream gaming press. What was revealed in that presentation however, is very significant.

DeLoura explained that the PSP's CPU and bus have software-configurable clockspeeds. The CPU core is currently locked to a maximum clockspeed of 222MHz, and the bus (typically operating at half the CPU speed) is locked to a top speed of 111Mhz. The GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) operates at bus speed, in other words, up to the 111MHz cap. The advantage of having configurable clockspeeds in a portable device is that power consumption can be controlled by adjusting the clockspeed to the demands of the software at any given moment. When the PSP is rendering complex in-game graphics at around 222MHz it will necessarily chew up more power than it would need to when displaying a simple menu screen running at say 5MHz.

The hardware specifications of the PSP were released last year. Since then it's been known that the PSP CPU's top clockspeed is 333MHz and the bus and GPU's top speed is 166MHz. See what's going on? Sony have deliberately locked the PSP's operating speed at exactly two-thirds of it's actual potential. They have an extra fifty percent of it's current performance ability simply waiting in reserve to be unleashed at a later date.

As I pointed out in my PSP Lowdown back in January, the graphical performance exhibited in PSP's launch titles looks like it's somewhere between PSone and PS2 standard. Now I understand why. The PS2's Emotion Engine (CPU) runs at 294.912MHz and it's Graphics Synthesizer (GPU) runs at 147.456MHz. While the PSP is clearly a more powerful device on paper, it's currently being restricted to a sub-PS2 standard of performance.

Of course, this begs the question: why? Why would Sony choose to cripple their own hardware? Well, the most obvious answer is that they needed to maintain an acceptable battery life. In the lead up to PSP's debut, it's battery duration was often quoted as it's single biggest potential problem. Had they launched the PSP with games running at a fully unlocked 333Mhz, the battery could have been dead in less than two hours. That just wouldn't do. Through capping the PSP's clockspeed (and enforcing other power-saving guidelines) Sony have achieved a respectable 4-6 hours of gameplay from a single charge. It now seems apparent that Sony have actually delivered a portable console whose capabilities are too advanced for current battery technology. Once that technology improves, it seems inevitable that Sony will release a higher capacity battery and unlock PSP's full potential.

The current performance cap may have other benefits in the long run. Rather than letting developers wastefully chew up the whole of PSP's hardware capability from the get-go with inefficient code, the restrictions essentially force them to code more efficiently from the beginning. Consequently, when the ceiling is eventually lifted, the developers will be ready to put the extra power to good use.

It has been theorized that the clockspeed cap is in the PSP's firmware, and will be removed by a firmware update. A developer at the gaming-age forums recently disclosed that this isn't the case. The restriction is actually being imposed at the game development stage, by way of limits in Sony's PSP libraries. The PSP devkits allow developers to constantly modify the CPU clockspeed settings from anywhere between 1 and 333MHz (or 0.5-166Mhz for the GPU and bus), but the current software libraries simply won't go above 222MHz (or 111Mhz for GPU and bus).

Initially restricting certain features of a console is not as uncommon as you might expect. As an example, the PS2 was restricted from displaying progressive scan for many years, though usually such restrictions are handled by the TRC process, not by a software restriction. The TRC (Technical Requirement Check) is the console manufacturer's checklist that games must pass before being published. Any developers who try to hack the current PSP libraries to exceed the clockspeed limits will undoubtedly have their games rejected at the TRC stage. Sony probably felt it would be easier to simply restrict the libraries than to ask the developers politely not to go above 222Mhz, and have to later issue a wave of TRC rejections. Sony will provide developers with new software libraries when they are ready to remove the restrictions. Games developed after that will be free to exploit all of the PSP's processing power. Ridge Racers' associate producer Hideo Teramoto recently confirmed in an Edge magazine interview that unlike the underclocked Ridge Racers, Namco will release PSP games in future that run at 333MHz.

When the time comes, consumers won't need to do anything. No firmware update should be required. Old games won't run any faster than they ever did, because the restrictions are in the game software, not in the PSP itself. The new games will simply push PSPs harder than ever before. Sony will have much improved high-capacity batteries on the market by then, but you won't actually need to buy one. The latest and greatest games will run on your old battery. Of course, the speed at which they'll drain your old battery should be incentive enough for you to rush out and buy a new one.

The tangible difference in the games should be very noticeable. Example: Right now, the PSP has a maximum fillrate of 444 Mpixels/sec. After the restrictions are lifted that will become 664 Mpixels/sec. Games will be able to feature more complex models with higher polygon-counts, more fluid frame-rates, better physics, you name it. We are talking about an across-the-board fifty percent performance increase after all. PSP's hardware supremacy over the PS2 should become evident. It's even possible that when the new battery is released, the PSP's fourth screen brightness setting (uber-blinding strength; currently only selectable when the PSP is plugged into mains power), will be available all the time.
PSP's future certainly looks bright.

Original source quoted is now unavailable, but found this that backs up some of whats said

http://www.sonypspworld.com/2005/03/sony-psp-underclocked.html



Could be a very bright future ahead :)



Corpsical

[Vimes220]

couldn't just give us the highlight could ya.

[Corpsical]

:) Well it seemed worth the detail, hope it turns out to be true ... if the games are this good now ... they are going to be truely awesome later.


Anyway why are you posting? havent you got a PSP to play with? :) ... or is it re-charging? :) , glad it arrived safely.


Corpsical

[Vimes220]

:) Well it seemed worth the detail, hope it turns out to be true ... if the games are this good now ... they are going to be truely awesome later.


Anyway why are you posting? havent you got a PSP to play with? :) ... or is it re-charging? :) , glad it arrived safely.


Corpsical

its was playing gone in 60 seconds off the memory stick while i was typing :D :D