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Sony PSP/Nintendo DS Opinion Piece
Mr Nash writes "The Armchair Empire has posted a lengthy op-ed about Sony's PSP and Nintendo's Dual Screen where the writer comes to the conclusion that "the market just doesn't appear to be ready for a pair of new handhelds to step onto the scene."
It has a large and growing library of games stretching back to the original GameBoy
No, it doesn't; The DS is backwards compatible with only GBA games, not older GB or GBC. Furthermore, its compatibility with GBA games is limited to single-player and does not support any form of linking with non-DS games.
The DS is more like partially sideways compatible with the GBA. I say partially because only single-player features will work on the DS. I say sideways because Nintendo has vowed to continue support for the GBA. If the DS were the GBA's "true" successor, they'd have plans to begin phasing out GBA hardware and, to a lesser extent, software. Not to mention the fact that they'd have made the DS fully compatible with the GBA. The compatibility with the GBA that they are including, in my opinion, is just to make the DS a safer purchase in the eyes of consumers. Even if it flops horribly, the unit won't be useless, after all. Personally, I'm hoping someone figures out a hack to get multiplayer features and Gamecube connectivity working on the DS anyway.
If the DS is a success, the real successor to the GBA will likely take on the DS's most successful features and be 100% backwards compatible with both the GBA and the DS, but I don't see them doing that until they can shrink the hardware a bit more. Not that the DS is too big, but the GBA-SP hit a real sweet spot as far as size is concerned. It's just a little cramped for gameplay sometimes. I'd love to see the next Gameboy flip up like the GBA-SP, then have the controls on the bottom slide out to the left and right, revealing the bottom screen and making the unit more comfortable to hold.