Sony expects to sell 2.5 mln-3 mln PSPs this holiday season

reuters.com
Thu Oct 20, 2005 10:25 AM ET168
By Lisa Baertlein

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Sony Corp. (6758.T: Quote, Profile, Research) plans to sell between 2.5 million and 3 million PlayStation Portable handheld video game devices in its first North American holiday season, the head of Sony Computer Entertainment America said.

"We're going to try to double the installed base between now and the end of the year," Kaz Hirai, Sony Computer Entertainment America president and chief executive, told Reuters in a telephone interview.

Hirai said the company had sold about 2.3 million PSPs in North America as of the end of September.

About the size of a paperback, the PSP can be used as a photo viewer and also plays movies and digital music. It debuted in late March in the United States.

The company also said it would begin offering a PSP Giga Pack for $299. The PSP bundle will hit stores in time for the holidays and include various accessories such as a 1-gigabyte memory stick, which can store about 30 hours of music. Sony will continue to sell its $249 PSP Value Pack with a 32-megabyte memory stick which holds the equivalent of one to two albums of music.

The PSP along with other handheld game players, such as Nintendo Co. Ltd's Game Boy Advance SP and DS, have driven game sales and helped offset the impact of a slump in console game sales amid a transition to next-generation consoles from Sony, Microsoft Corp. (MSFT.O: Quote, Profile, Research) and Nintendo. (7974.OS: Quote, Profile, Research)

U.S. video game hardware and software sales were $10 billion in 2004.

Hirai also said Sony is expecting to sell 2.5 million to "a tad below 3 million" units of its industry-leading PlayStation 2 console in North America between now and the end of 2005. That machine will compete with Microsoft's new Xbox 360, which is slated for a November 22 North American release.


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