John Koller, product manager for Sony,s PSP, gave his views on the differences and direction of the PSP versus Nintendo,s DS Lite in a recent interview given to Joystiq. According to Koller, the DS Lite has had no effect on sales of Sony’s competing handheld.
“There has been no impact on sales. We have had steady sales since before the DS Lite and to today. Looking at it objectively they’ve had a very successful launch, obviously, and I think they’re seeing a lot of Nintendo loyalists jump back in the market and there’s a lot of retail initiatives to trade in your old DS for a DS Lite. If you look at the numbers, they did very well in June. But, if you look at our numbers since launch until now, we have outsold the DS by approximately 900,000 units in North America. Statistically speaking they had a holiday head start on the PSP, so in terms who have sold more overall has been a back and forth.”
To date, the PSP has sold over 4.4 million units in North America compared to the DS and DS Lite sales totaling over 1.46 million units.
When Koller was asked about the difference between Sony,s approach in marketing as opposed to Nintendo,s, he remarked that the DS was more suited for kids-an image that has often been pinned to the DS machine. “They live in the gaming part of our competition and they have made a sharp turn to sort of the shorter Brain Age-type of games, which I think has been really successful for their consumer. I think they cater to more of the younger consumer whereas we cater to more of the older one, 18-24 target. We’ve had the longer, deeper software titles whereas they have gone shorter and more kid friendly. That’s their business decision and they’ve made a successful career out of going that way and I don’t expect them to change that. I think for us we can look to expand if we want to go younger and we’ll certainly make titles for them as we go along.”
