Nintendo, Sony Start Handheld Gaming Battle At E3

An anonymous reader writes "There's a Wired News article up discussing the fight for handheld game console supremacy starting at next week's E3 Expo. According to Wired News, 'Nintendo, the biggest seller of video-game consoles 15 years ago, once again faces a tough street fight against Sony, the upstart that stole much of the video-game business with its PlayStation. This time, the fight is over handheld video-game machines, and if Nintendo loses, it could be in serious trouble.' It explains: 'Nintendo is expected to give peeks at its next-generation handheld system -- code-named the DS -- while Sony will release more information about its PSP. Both companies will be vying for the hearts and minds of gamers and -- more importantly -- software developers.' Who's gonna win?" Slashdot Games recently ran a related story that has developers and journalists analyzing the showdown to come.

Comments

Nintendo makes too many dumb mistakes...

[DroopyStonx]

For example, the GBA lacks the X and Y buttons of SNES, thus making a lot of the ports very awkward to control.

They started to lose footing with N64 by going cart based instead of CD based, and as a result, lost quite a bit of licensing. Bye bye, Squaresoft! No FF7 for Nintendo. Don't get me wrong, the console had a few good games (like Zelda), but there weren't many... just like with the GC. Metroid Prime, Resident Evil Remake, and Zelda (although I wish it was longer) were decent games, but... that's about it.

Sony has good sense in the usability department. The last I heard about the PSP, it'll pretty much imitate the PS constroller. 4 buttons on the right, triggers at the top, etc..

Will the DS be backwards compatible with GB/GBA? ...and what's with including the very out-of-place technology? There's been this trend about putting games on cell phones, but... the point of a cell phone is to talk with people, not play games. I don't think "wow, I can play games on this!" has been a big sales factor with phones, just like I highly doubt, "Ooooh, I can send IMs to my friends with my DS/PSP!" will be a big sales factor. What am I gonna do... press the up/down arrows to select letters one by one by one? It'll take ages to type out anything worthwhile. There gonna be a hookup for some type of keyboard? It's like using your cell for Instant Messaging: very freakin awkward and half the time not worth the trouble.

It boils down to games: how well they look, how good they play, and overall fun factor. Since Nintendo seems to be losing their footing, I feel that the victor will be Sony.

Nintendo has made too many mistakes and at this point, it's simply too late to reclaim the throne. They're basically a console for younger players, as those mature enough will find more entertainment in games that PS2/XBox has to offer.

Maybe their next-gen system will do good enough to make licensees think about switching to Nintendo for the console AFTER it, but... the next-gen will pretty much go to Sony again.