Business Week makes strong PSP predictions, including price

SCE representatives will be relieved to see at least one of the big guns fighting its corner this morning, with Business Week offering some of the most positive reportage on the PSP console to date.

“In our view, PSP will not cannibalise sales from the new PS2 because the former is entering the market for handheld game devices and the latter is leveraging the market of the old home-console model,” the magazine states. “Once PSP debuts in the U.S. - which we expect sometime between January and March 2005 - we look for total shipments (including Japan) to reach between 5 million and 6 million units. By end of fiscal year 2006, we project shipments of 10 million units worldwide.”

Which is an awful lot of hardware to shift. However, various pundits have pointed out that sales success for the PSP will rest on the shoulders of to-be-announced functionality it offers. Not to mention pricing.

BW addresses the pricing issue, indulging in some of the most specific dark-stabbing seen of late. “Since Sony will go head-to-head with Nintendo, which priced its new handheld gaming device at $136, we do not expect PSP to be priced at more than $200. Consequently, even if Sony sells PSP at the lower end of our projection, it could produce substantial incremental revenues in the second half of the fiscal year 2006.”