Sony PSP Says Change Your Shirt

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Hoping for Holiday Hits

Hirai is hardly throwing in the towel. His crew has planned a big marketing push around the PSP's redesign. The console, launched on Sept. 20 in Japan, is lighter and thinner, sports new chips to speed its command-response time, and comes in pink, silver, and blue, along with white and black. Sony already offers add-ons such as a camera and a Global Positioning System, and it will soon sell a digital TV tuner for the PSP in Japan. There's also a software upgrade that will make it a cinch to play games on a TV screen, either by directly connecting it to the set or by linking to Sony's PlayStation 3 living-room console. So far this month, the PSP has been the hottest-selling console in Japan, according to market researcher Media Create, which tracks weekly industry sales.

As the yearend shopping season nears, Sony hopes to keep the streak alive. At the Tokyo Game Show over the weekend, it showed off My Stylist, Talkman Travel (a guidebook, translator, map, and customizable mash-up travelogue in one), and Patapon (control a one-eyed critter by tapping rhythmically), which all target the nongamer and are being developed in-house. (Two of the three were ideas chosen at a contest Sony hosts in Japan for independent and aspiring game developers.)

Still, Sony has a lot to learn from Nintendo. Nintendo didn't have a booth at the Tokyo Game Show. It prefers to spend more time in direct marketing, sponsoring events on cruise ships, sending free DS consoles to blogging moms, and donating Wii machines to retirement homes. The DS's continuing strong sales have made outside developers eager to contribute. In October, Tokyo game company Konami (KNM) will release Dream Skincare for the DS, offering makeup and beauty tips from renowned beautician Chizu Saeki. And later this year, Konami will follow with two workout titles, Dokodemo Yoga (Yoga On-The-Go) and Dokodemo Pilates (Pilates On-The-Go), both offering a show-and-tell training regimen.

Nintendo's Edge

Analysts doubt the PSP's redesign will make a big enough difference to lift it past the DS. For first-time users, the Nintendo DS's double-screen layout and touch-panel mechanism are easier to manage than the PSP's multibutton configuration. That explains why a Brain Training game for both consoles can be a 5-million-unit hit on the DS but a flop on the PSP. "Games for nongamers are an effective way to reach more consumers, but it's not that simple," says Hirokazu Hamamura, president of Tokyo-based game market research firm Enterbrain. "Nintendo also invented new hardware."

Araki would disagree. She's been showing her pink PSP to friends who have never heard of it. "Once they learn about it, they're excited to get one," she says. "But they're my friends and so I take the time to explain it to them." That's a lesson Sony might try working into its marketing strategy.

With Hiroko Tashiro in Tokyo.

BusinessWeek correspondent Hall reports on companies from Tokyo.