Thoughts on the PSP and Nintendo DS

Before the U.S. PSP launch, I was cool because I had touched one and most other people in the U.S. had not. Oh, sure, it was months ago and only for a few seconds, but my contact with the system at E3 meant I had the final word on the subject; I was virtually irrefutable. If I had declared the world flat, my friends would lean together, and one would say, “That true?” to which another would respond, “I don’t know. Must be. He has touched a PSP.”

Now, Post Sony PSP Launch:

I find myself behind the times. Yesterday, I had my first chance to spend some time with the Sony PSP, with actual clicking and blowing things up, and was surprised at how tepid my response was. Sure, I was impressed. I watched a clip of Spiderman, played a little Metal Gear Acid, and saw the video quality of a full-length movie compressed down to 300 megs on the memory stick. That’s pretty impressive stuff, but $100 dollars more impressive than the Nintendo DS? To the mainstream gamer? Where before I held a despairing belief that the system would walk over the DS in sales, carrying away the heart and mind of even loyal Nintendo fans like myself, I now honestly believe that we’re in for a less cut and dry handheld war than people originally thought.

The PSP and Nintendo DS Are Both Great:

It's odd that I'm tepid, because the PSP is great. It has all sorts of cool things going for it. Everything you hoped for ends up in this little handheld unit. The screen is big enough that it gives you motion sickness watching Spiderman II with it in your hands; it’s awesome. The surprising thing, then, was how happy I was with my Nintendo DS when I picked it up again a little while later. Sure, the screen was smaller, but there were two of them. It wasn’t playing movies yet, but probably will someday. After all, even the Gameboy Advance has a media player available – the DS can’t be that far behind.

What Else Does the PSP Give You?:

• Wireless: Internet capabilities? The PSP can be hacked to allow for a limited amount of browsing capability, but for the most part the PSP’s Internet capability isn’t really available to users yet. It can connect to Wifi networks, but so can the DS, and at the moment the only real difference between the two is that the PSP can check for updates and the DS is waiting for software to do the same. Until Internet game services are launched that allow players to find each other onilne, the two systems are capable of about the same thing. When it does launch, how those systems work and how much they cost could tip the balance in either Sony or Nintendo’s direction.
  
  
• Movies: The ability to compress and play your own movies is something that gets nerds like me worked up, but the average user doesn’t have time to make their own movies. They have to rely on whatever is released, and I’m not all that concerned with watching Spiderman II on the go. After the initial Sony line-up of titles, there aren’t a lot of studios that have agreed the UMD is the way to distribute movies.
  
  
• Music: The extra cost of purchasing a memory stick big enough to fit any sort of competent music collection puts the cost of the PSP over $300 before taxes, and that’s without a game to play. Add in the cost of a game and you’re talking more than what people paid for the Xbox and PS2 at launch in a market that traditionally considers handheld units less valuable than the home versions.

Here Comes the Hero?:

Enter the Nintendo DS. A fully capable system that can do the online stuff if Nintendo wants it to and has great gaming capability if some good games start showing up. It sells for half the price of the PSP. The Gameboy market has always been a mainstream market. After the hardcore buy the PSP out, the rest of the world, the ones familiar with the Gameboy Advance but not protocols like MPG4, will be looking for a step up for themselves or their children that doesn’t cost them a fortune. If that’s the case, the Nintendo DS isn’t in a bad position. All they need are some games worth playing.

Don’t Be So Sure:

Many of the people I work with were ready to declare the Nintendo DS dead in the water. “By 2006,” one said, “Sony will control half the handheld market.” Maybe. Initial reports on the sell of the PSP are mixed, with the street word suggesting that the launch isn’t going great. I’ve called five local outlets in my area, big and small, and every one has stock available and on-hand. We’ll have to wait and see how the game plays out. Don’t be so ready to declare one a winner and the other a loser. Nintendo isn’t as much on the defensive as the media likes to paint them.

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