Hey kids, can you guess the best way to promote your products and industry as a whole?

If you said "compare it to drugs," well, you might not be right, but you're good enough to work for Sony.

Yeah, yeah, I know. "Overreaction much?" In any case, given the hill the hobby is trying to climb in the eyes of some parents in terms of legitimizing itself, referring to the PSP as a "gateway drug" to consoles as SCEA Senior Marketing Manager John Koller did seems a little questionable, at best.

"In the past, it was a small screen experience. It was something that was very difficult to have from a social perspective," he said. "Those things have changed."

It is also noted that Sony has seen a demographic shift for the PSP since its launch, going from 28-40 year-old business men in the subway on the way to work (hurray, I'm old now) to younger and multi-ethnic users who like to play together.

"It's become, from a gaming perspective, a lot different than I think we even envisioned it when we first launched it," said Koller.

"That's a very good thing. It's expansionary. For us, the PSP is a very high growth, high margin business and something that is a very good product for us."

He adds that the company sees the product as a sort of "gateway drug" into the world of consoles, with those who have begun their gaming lifestyle on a PlayStation Portable moving on up to the PlayStation 3 as they move along the curve of adoption.

"For us, it has been a really interesting experience. The PSP really parlays well into our broader hardware business."

Koller also mentions how the PSP is being looked at for a wide variety of other uses beyond gaming, as they hope to release their GPS system in North America soon, and a PSP keyboard within the next year's time.

Wedbush Morgan Securities analyst Michael Pachter, who moderated the roundtable discussion, went on to specifically address the perception that the PSP is a "terrible device that no one owns and is a disaster business."

"If you go look at sell through...and I have North America numbers...If you look at sell-through for PSP, at a much higher price point, it is about six months behind the adoption curve of the Game Boy Advance which averaged about USD 80 cheaper."

"That's not the DS, but the original Game Boy Advance - the Game Boy Advance that had no competition. So, people 'dis' the PSP, but the business is a pretty solid business," Pachter said.

Insert some cheesey sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll cliche' here that fits as a closer, if you've got one.