With its superior hardware, Sony's PSP had the potential to be the leading handheld; however, this never happened due to Sony's bad decissions.
Sony's senior VP and MD for UK, Ireland and the Nordic region Ray Maguire admitted and explained those mistakes.
"It was slightly under-supported, mainly because a lot of the energy was going into stuff we're doing for PlayStation 3," he said. "There was an added complication in that the UMD model wasn't brilliant for third parties, either."
"But I think as the installed base has grown - we're now at 50 million globally - the PSP has become one of the best-selling formats ever, and I think people are seeing that they need to get back into it. I think we had a bit of a barren year last year, and this year we seem to have a bumper crop."
"I think it's one of those formats which has just, almost silently, grown and grown and grown. Now people are looking at 3 million installed base in the UK, and seeing it's a healthy number - that they can sell product against that."
"Retailers are looking at it as well, realising that they haven't supported it as much as maybe they might have done, and they're also thinking about how we almost reintroduce the PlayStation Portable into the market place, with the confidence that we should have had last year, but didn't."
"We do have that confidence this year - many things are happening with the PSP. The online side of it is developing nicely, and there are clearly lots of great games for it this year, but also we're introducing new colours - so it starts to become much more desirable for a wider range of consumers."
