Chris Kohler has an interesting article on the Wired games blog about a shift in Sony's marketing strategy for the PSP towards focusing on 13-17 year old consumers as well as the recent price drop for the handheld. It looks like they're finally coming to terms with the fact they're losing miserably to Nintendo and the DS. From the article:
"There were a few reasons," says Koller, for dropping the PSP's
price now. First, Sony "received some savings on the cost of goods,
which we wanted to get to the consumer." Second, "Wal-Mart sold 110,000
units in five days on Black Friday [last year] when they dropped the
price to $169." Finally, the aforementioned shift to the 13-17 year old
market.
The desire to more directly target that 13-17 year-old market was what led to the All I Want For Christmas Is A PSP
campaign last year, Koller said. "That campaign clearly did not work,"
he said, but it was an attempt to "identify ways of speaking and
marketing to that 13-17 year-old consumer. It was an effort to be able
to target that individual in a more quiet manner and not go out and
promote it and have it be something that was found. The way it was done
is not correct... In the future, we'll be more clear and transparent to
the consumer."
Going forward, Sony will unveil the "Dude, Get Your Own" campaign.
The
idea this year, says Koller, is to "break out of the home cycle." A
significant amount of PSP users in that 13-17 group play the device at
home. "The teens that are doign this value the ability to utilize the
portability," Koller notes paradoxically. By portability, he clarifies,
he means "I can play it upstairs while my parents are watching the TV
downstairs."
This, of course, is of little value to adults with their own
apartments and TV sets. For teens, it is a big draw, which is one
reason for the high sales in that group.
But Sony wants them to get it out of the house and "into more of a lifestyle focus." That's the reason for adding the T-Mobile hotspot functionality
that Sony touted last month. Koller says that Sony will "regularly
launch" firmware updates this year with functionality that is strongly
directed at that 13-17 market, although he could not reveal details on
any of them.
Sony has found that more and more PSP owners are using the device
for multimedia applications, specifically, downloading music and movies
from their PC to the PSP. "There's a lot of that," says Koller. In
fact, Sony says the "second most valued use of PSP" is as a music
playback device. "Music shot up substantially" over the holiday season,
he says.
As for releasing a new hardware redesign of PSP that includes more onboard storage, Koller would not say.
Chris Kohler
April 4, 2007