Last year, Sony sold 3.82 million of its little handheld wonder, the PlayStation Portable. An impressive number until you compare it to the 8.5 million units Nintendo's DS was able to move. They are numbers that should cause Sony and its investors some alarm. But what's the reason, and can the company turn the outlook around? In this two part series we point our fingers and laugh at the missteps as well as offer a few very viable solutions for getting the handheld with so much potential into more peoples' hands.

1. Bring it Down.

The easy answer, to the first question at least, is price. While it may seem overly simplistic, price can't be discounted as simply the poor man's answer.

When it was originally released and placed next to the DS, the sexiness and heft of the PSP alone could have been considered justification for the almost $100 price difference. It looked like the successor to the iPod while making the plastic DS look like a dual-screened gimmick.

Now, set side by side, against the sleek new DS Lite it looks like an overly expensive also-ran minus a touch screen. With the PS3, Sony has shown it isn't shy about selling hardware at a loss and making the PSP more price competitive should be something the big company really considers.

2. Change it up.

I want my electric blue PSP Vision with the second analogue stick.

In an informal poll, calls to a handful of local gaming stores showed us an interesting trend - of all the original DS units traded in, every clerk we spoke with estimated that 80% or more were handed in (at a significant loss) as credit against an upgrade to the DS Lite. Considered objectively however, without any real change in functionality, can the move from an original NDS to an NDS Lite really be seen as an upgrade though? In the minds of the impulse consumer, the answer seems to be a very loud "Yes!"

But what did the same informal poll reveal about the PSP 2000? Of the 5 stores called, only one clerk new of a single PSP turned in for trade-in credit against the upgraded PSP.

How does one make sense of this? The NDS Lite's sported a new form factor and radically different colors than the simple faux silver of the original. In addition to that, the new moniker clearly defined one of the main differences between the original and the redesign and made it compelling.

Sony, on the other hand, quickly dropped the term "Slim" from all of its marketing before the device even hit store shelves, leaving it instead with the very confusing model number 2000. Likewise, from the original black available in the US, new colors drifted only as far as white and silver - visually a regression towards the old white iPods and original DS of the past! Even more fascinating was the recent announcement that different colors (such as green) will be made available in Japan only, save the red God of War model - to hit stores in June, nearly four months AFTER the game's release!

In addition to the questionable name, and lack of visual differentiation from the original PSP, consumers have been left with confusion and disappointment regarding the actual upgrades that were made. Is it the component cables that let you play games but not movies, or vice-versa? The RCA cables allow me to watch UMDs on my TV, but you say you have decided to stop releasing movies in that format? Hold on, you want to appeal more to hardcore gamers but you are still insisting on leaving off a second analogue stick leaving FPS's nearly unplayable?

I am confused. Wait, why am I buying this?