PSP Vs. DS One Year Later

1up has a feature revisiting the ongoing struggle for supremacy in the handheld market. The PSP and the DS have had many ups and downs in the past year, and the column lays out the successes and failures for both systems. From the article: "And then there were two. The DS is cleaning up in Japan -- the sheer demand for the console there has siphoned every single unit from the marketplace, while PSPs sit unloved on store shelves. But here in the U.S., it's a neck-and-neck race. And, since the PSP launched one year ago on March 24th, 2005, we thought it'd be an excellent time to revisit the past year and gauge the situation as it stands today."

Comments

The DS, of course

[AKAImBatman]

But here in the U.S., it's a neck-and-neck race.

A lot of people purchased the PSP because it was new and cool, and for its multimedia features. Now that the PSP isn't so new anymore and the UMD format is falling out of favor, I fully expect that the DS will begin to pull ahead of the PSP in sales. The reason is that DS sales are driven by the titles themselves (e.g. Nintendogs, Metroid Prime, Mario Kart DS, Tetris DS, etc.) rather than the hype of the hardware. As a result, the Nintendo DS is likely to gain momentum as long as Nintendo keeps producing blockbuster titles for it.

In addition, the Nintendo DS targets a far larger market (adult men, teenage men, children, and women) than the PSP (young adult men with disposable cash) and competes heavily at a lower price point. Customizations like "pink" hardware help push it with the alternative markets.

Basically, Nintendo has a winner on their hands, and will do well as long as they don't screw it up. Sony has a first attempt on their hands that did exceptionally well. We'll see if they follow it up with a more focused device.

DS VS PSP

[Turn-X Alphonse]

I haven't read the article, I try to avoid things like this because of the insane fanboyism but..

In the community it seems the PSP is mostly being used for emulation and the DS is being bought for DS games. The PSP might be a good jack of all trades machine, but the DS is for games and in the gaming community it's wiping the floor with the PSP.

To quote a message I saw once "I love my PSP, but it's collecting dust while I play my DS". This seems to be the general feeling around the two handhelds. One is worth playing and the others great, but it's not being used as a handheld, more as a portable PS2. Which is not what people want.

"Mature Games" And Other Oxymorons

[American AC in Paris]

From TFA:

It's difficult to ignore, though, that the PSP seems like the most attractive prospect right now for Western developers making "mature" games.

[...]

But in the U.S., the DS is seen as more like the successor to the Game Boy. Far from the brief flirtation with adult games like Sprung, Western devs are looking at the DS and thinking, "kids."

I still don't buy the "maturity myth"--or rather, I'm increasingly convinced that the "mature game" demographic is rapidly shrinking as a percentage of the overall gaming population. I genuinely don't think that either system's success or failure hinges primarily on the availability of "mature" games.

I wish the author had provided some support for his assertions--for example, which Western developers are shunning the DS because they think it is for kids? What makes the PSP inherently more attractive to the makers of "mature" games?

I think that Sony not releasing US sales figures is telling--if they were outselling the DS, don't you think they'd be shouting that fact from the rooftops? Of interest, too, is the slow-death of UMD movies. The DS is flying off the shelves--is the same true for the PSP?