US PSP numbers revealed

Following on from our previous news story reporting on PSP's lukewarm US arrival, the first indications of how much it actually managed to sell are in.

US industry analyst PJ McNealy of American Technology Research has concluded that in seven days on sale in the US PSP shifted between 475,000 and 575,000 machines.

While Sony has not released any official figures itself - which it no doubt would if all one million PSPs had been shifted - American Technology Research has reached these conclusions after conducting a survey using a 150-strong representative sample of retail outlets.

According to McNealy, the main retail stores such as Gamestop and Electronics Boutique are sold out of PSPs, but other stores not singularly associated with videogames such as Toys R Us and Circuit City - and specifically Wal-Mart and Target who received more stock than expected - still have supplies left.

Despite PSP not selling out, even with the massive hype surrounding the handheld, it's not a major blow for Sony considering Nintendo's significantly-lower-priced DS also achieved US first-week sales of around the 500,000 mark.

nice to know its doing well ... UK and Europe still waits for their shipments Sony :(

they could have delivered 400,000 to europe for our launch

Well, from what I have seen it seems that the first week the PSPs didn't sell that well, but now that more time has gone by and more people are seeing friends with one or are hearing about it, they seem to have gone out to the streets to snatch the ones that were left.

I bought my PSP 4 days after launch, I got it at a not too popular Target store in San Diego, and there were at least 15 boxes when I got mine. I opened it up as soon as I got into the car and found two barely noticeable green pixels on a black background. Since they were not a big deal to me, and everything else was pristine, I decided not to exchange it right then since I have 90 days to do so.

This Sunday a friend of mine told me that he had decided to get a PSP as well, so off we went to the same Target store I had bought mine from only to find out, that there were no more available. We then started a tour of all the stores that carried it around the area (Wal-mart, Best Buy, Circuit City, Fry's, K-Mart, Toys R' Us, Target), only to find none had it in stock. Another Target had just sold out 5 minutes earlier, and the girl at the counter was kind enough to call other stores and check for availability. We got the same help from a K-Mart employee, and there was no PSP to be found.

Now, I'm pretty sure that there are places in the US where stores still have a lot of PSPs in stock, maybe a K-Mart or Target lost somewhere in the Midwest, I have no clue. But from what I have seen, I would think that any major US city will be sold out by now (of course I have no proof, this is just an opinion).

And now to find that elusive 512mb memory stick duo.

I got mine over at Hastings and got the 512 mb memory stick duo over at best buy for 50 bucks. My PSP has no problems what so ever too. :)