Reuters is reporting that Sony Computer Entertainment has finally done the sensible thing and slashed the price of its digital-exclusive PSP, the PSPgo.
Starting now, apparently, the handheld is $199 in the US, which is down from its original launch pricing of 250 bones. That's a total $50 worth of savings for a portable that we're often surprised to see major support from anymore and was often panned and grumbled about during launch for having such a big tag to begin with.
The price is being lowered in Japan and Europe, too. According to Reuters, the price will now be 16,800 yen instead of 26,800 yen in Japan. VG247 reports that the hardware now costs 160 Euros in Europe, down from its original 199 Euros price point.
Gamasutra reminds us that the PSPgo, as of the end of this September, offers over 590 downloadable games and over a thousand bits of video content as well as comic stuff. But, obviously, it can't play UMD discs, which is what most existing PSP owners seem to have a lot of.
I'll just wait for the PSP 2 at this point, hopefully it will be digitally exclusive from the start with the option to download titles from the PSP library too.
Really liked downloading games for my PSP, not a lot of room though.
They were on sale for $200 several months ago. I bought one then... love it! P3 Portable, Valkyria Chronicles 2, and GT (since GT5 is never coming out :(
" I'm not even getting one for 99 cents. I like my games on disc in a box with a manual, thank you. "
Well your gonna be fucked in a few years when everything is digitally distributed. "
That won't happen 'in a few years'. Fony, '$oft and the rest will not risk alienating gamers that don't have access to the internet (more people than you might expect).
PSP what? I have an iPad and have no use for a dedicated game device. Mainly because I'm an old fogie now and didn't use my PSP or DS back in the days when I had one. :p
Still, not a good value even if I wanted to get back into PSP.
I was looking into buying a PSP right when the Go came out. As a potential "new user" with no UMD collection, I assume I was the target market. But there were so few PSP games available for the Go, and the price was so high, that I bought a 3000. I wasn't going to wait another year or forever for Sony to get their shit together and make all their games available for the Go. If all their games had been available digitally I might have bought a Go at the time.......might have.
Okay, Sony. Now add a majority of the existing library to the PS Store. Oh, and make it mandatory for developers to release digital versions along with UMDs.
It's more about the price point I think. $200 is way too much for a PSP in my opinion now a days. $150 usd would have been a much more intriguing price but as it is now, it's too close to the price of a full-fledged console without too many advantages over the original PSP or a Nintendo DS.
Ultimately the PSP GO has more potential than many customers realize because of it's online capabilities and niche games you can purchase off PSN but it's still overall a bad value, especially with all the leaks of the PSP2 coming soon.
@ProfessorEss: yeah portable shit should not scale with console prices... i mean your really only going to play them when your traveling(if you have a console), and really that makes them far less valuable. I mean 200? i can get like 50 more and get an xbox, i think i can find a wii for 200...
Meh, you americans have it easy. the RRP for the PSP GO in the UK is 225 quid, which a quick google currency convert tells me is $350. WHAT THE HELL IS UP WITH THAT? and now they *might* be lowering it to *the same price* as it is in the US?!? F*** you sony, F*** you...
Put up ALL PSP games on PSN and then cut the prices of those games because $40 for Resistance on PSP is fucking retarded. No handheld game should be $40 anyways.
Seriously, a closed handheld system with no hobby dev kit and no physical media? I hope all such experiments fail miserably in the marketplace.
Seriously Sony, if you're going to 100% control the software channel you have to basically give the hardware away, or at least price it in the range of geek impulse buy. example: base model itouch.
Was already retailing for about $160 used here in Japan, and I've seen new models for about $210. If it I find one for $100, I might buy it for kicks, but with the PSP2 all but announced I guess I should just wait it out and keep my old 1000 (which continues to serve me well).
Why would it matter if the PSP go doesnt support discs? I mean, are they not trying to get new users, not people with existing collections? i understand a big wave will be those who love the PSP, but this shows that big blunder of this system was the high price. It should have been 199 from the start. And right now it should be 169. But it will never be where I want it to feel it is worth the purchase.
What's really messed up about the PSPGo, other than price and support, is that when I download something I would expect it to be cheaper than buying a physical copy. When I look at the prices of downloadable PSP games and do a comparison at Amazon of the UMDs - the UMDs are often cheaper. It's kind of ridiculous.
Charging more for a system which has less features then your existing system, and then telling people that the reason is because people like paying extra for premium electronics.. I still can't believe there were people who actually thought this would work.
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