Comments on: Report: PSP won't get music downloads soon

PaidContent is reporting that Sony has given up plans to offer digital music and the executive in charge of handling the labels has left.

[TimGray--2008]

PSP the best portable? HUH? The DS beats it hard hands down. Current and past sales numbers support this as a fact and not an opinion. I love my PSP but the DS is what people want, not the PSP.

Sales don't make a better product. McDonald's has sold more hamburgers than any other company on Earth, that means their hamburgers are the best?

No. It means they have a cheap product that appeals to parents with small children who don't care how good something is.

Yup. Nintendo has the McDonald's audience.

[Leebo41]

DS is a good portable for my young daughter, since it centers around the younger users. However for the older and hardcore gamer the PSP offer a better platform of mature games! Example: Killzone! I don't pay attention to sales, because I like what I like, not what other people are buying! If they only sold 2 PSPs I would have one of them!

[ibeetle]

Sony should use this opportunity to get out of the software market. They can still make great hardware, but there software has been barley passable.

Now that iTunes Music Store, Amazon and eMusic is pretty much DRM free Sony should just provide the hardware experience and let PSP users get their music from others that seem to be able to do a better job of delivery. Sony should sign a deal with Apple, or Amazon to sync with their music management tools (i.e. iTunes, etc.) and offer a free $10 gift card with each PSP purchase to get users started.

"But it has been well chronicled that the machine was hobbled by Sony's decision to initially offer physical media (Universal Media Disc) rather than digital content."

It was not hobbled by any such thing. The machine has sold 50 million units world wide. More than the PS3. More than the Xbox 360. The Wii just recently surpassed that mark.

What people figured out, very early on, was that you didn't need a company controlling your digital content. You could rip your own CDs and DVDs and drag and drop them straight to the device when it was connected to your computer. Try that with an iPod and see how far you get.