The Japanese market has been good to the PSP, picking up 12 million units of the portable hardware since its December 2004 launch. It’s this fervent support that Sony Computer Entertainment wants to maintain not only with the October 1st release of the PSP Go, but also with the cheaper, older SKUs of the system as well. Along those lines the company recently announced a drop in price with the PSP-3000 to 16,800 yen (roughly $185,) the same day as the launch of the PSP Go. No word yet on whether other regions will enjoy a similar drop in price, but the move could also be an attempt by Sony to weed out the remaining stock of the PSP-3000 to make room for the UMD-less PSP Go. Whatever the reason, the lower price further widens the gap between the two system iterations, and with the variety of Japan-only colors, could be enough motivation to see an upturn in the 3000’s numbers.
I hope the 3000 wastes the Go. I really don’t want to see any platform go fully digital.