After 10 years, Sony Corp. is saying goodbye to the PlayStation Portable (PSP) video game machine. 

The PSP hasn't been selling well lately due to more demand for smartphones and other devices. Still, Sony is trying to push its PlayStation Vita, the successor to the PSP.

Sony said it stopped shipping PSPs to the U.S. in January. They'll stop shipping them within Japan later this month and in Europe later this year.

Sony is cutting the prices on Vita systems and game downloads in Japan for current PSP owners. It is unknown whether they will extend these discounts to other markets around the world.

As of two years ago, the last time a tally was taken, more than 76 million PSP machines were sold.

Consumers haven't been buying game-devoted machines; instead they are choosing to buy smartphones and other devices. In the last fiscal year, Sony reported a $1.3 billion loss. The company is expecting another reported loss this year as well.

Analysts have expressed doubt about the Vita, saying it isn't selling well. Sony does not report sales of the Vita worldwide and its calculations of its sales could be skewed. The company combines its sales of Vita and the PSP into one number.

Rival Nintendo Co. has a handheld device, the 3DS, and has sent pressure to Sony. 

The portable gaming world has been expanding ever since the major release of Nintendo's Gameboy. When Sony fnally released the PSP, it became the first advanced-portable gaming system.

In 2004, the PSP debuted. That was three years before the first iPhone debuted from Apple. When smartphones hit the market, portable devices took a hit. In ten years the PSP sold 76 million units, in just two quarters of 2014 for comparison, Apple sold 94 million iPhones.

Smartphones can play games, although most of them don't have joysticks or trigger buttons, but gamers have shown they are willing to sacrifice less gaming for the increased functionality of a smartphone.