Where the HECK Did All of Those PSP Games Come From?

A couple of weeks ago when Apple introduced iPhone OS 4 something struck me, but I had forgotten it until someone on a forum was asking me about the amount of games on the PSP … then it came back to me. Do you remember when Apple announced the new iPod lineup in September of 2009? At the time I wrote about the iPod Touch questioning the quantity to quality ratio, and led with this image:

Image Source: Engadget

Back then I thought that the PSP number was perhaps a bit low, given that I had reviewed more than 200 PSP games personally and didn’t think I’d tested out 1/3 of the offerings for the platform!

Since then the NPD sales figures for 2009 came out and in my discussion of the portable sales I quoted from that summary:

Sony PSP revenue shrank by ~30% and market share was cut nearly in half

But then just a few days later we had the iPhone OS 4 announcement, and we saw this image:

Image Source: Engadget

If we look at the numbers presented by Apple in terms of the growth represented, here is what we find:

Think about that in context: we are supposed to trust Apple’s numbers, yet they would have us believe that the same platform that is losing market share and raw revenues at an alarming rate saw an increase in available games of 300% over the last 6 months. Or … that their initial numbers were wrong.

My quick check of meta-review sites show there are well under 1000 games out for the PSP in North America, including PSP Minis and PSOne re-releases. Of those ~125 have been released since September, which includes ALL PSP Minis.

Does this matter? Of course it does – Apple is specifically trying to target other devices for market share takeover, and the PSP is an obvious choice. Both devices are built around graphically-rich experiences and wonderful abilities as media centers. People are very familiar with the iPod system and therefore there is direct competition between the two systems – with the iPod Touch winning by a large amount.

You know what I would find interesting? If Sony jumped on this and used it in marketing:

Sony PSP is the fastest growing portable gaming platform according to Apple!

Sadly Sony’s PSP marketing has been almost monolithically incompetent, so I’m pretty sure they won’t manage to use this to their advantage in any way.

So what do you think about this … or is it just clear that I spend WAY too much time thinking about meaningless minutia?!?!