UK retailers lament PSP Go pre-orders, demand PSN cards

If PSP Go is considered a "ripoff" in America, what do our friends in the UK call it, where it may retail for more than double the cost of the current PSP? The official UK price has yet to be revealed, but the leading national retailer Game is taking pre-orders at a "guide price" of £230, a significant jump over the average retail price of £100 for the current PSP.

The sticker shock may be scaring off customers, as independent shops are telling Edge some frightening pre-order stories. "I don't have a single pre-order for PSP Go at the moment," Chips' Don McCabe told the outlet. "We haven't got any [PSP Go pre-orders] at all," repeated Grainger Games' Chris Harwood. While the head of SCEE believes consumers will pay an early adopter premium, McCabe believes otherwise. "We can't see where that price justification comes in when effectively it's a lighter, slimmer PSP. It's got a bit more memory, but memory's not that expensive. It can't handle UMD so part of the mechanism disappears, so where does the price come from?"

Retailers are not getting an added benefit for stocking the PSP Go. Margins on game hardware have been historically low and PSP Go looks to follow suit. In America, SCEA's Eric Lempel noted retailer enthusiasm due to the sale PlayStation Network cards at retail. UK retail partners currently don't have an equivalent revenue source, a problem that may hinder retail enthusiasm. "You need to see some sort of revenue streams coming off the back of these machines, otherwise from a retail point of view it's just not worth it," said McCabe.