The Handheld War is Won by Geek Woman 1/4/06

The DS would has now sold more units worldwide than the PSP has as of
the end of 2005. I’m not including those PR driven “shipped” figures,
which don’t mean anything tangible.

The Sony brand may be suffering from a bad rap due to the big snafu
with their CD division. They included experimental non piracy
software on music CD’s that “phoned home”. Sony used a rootkit as
part of their Digital Rights Management (DRM) to protect the CD’s
against piracy supposedly. Instead they alienated their client base.
The story was covered in newspapers, media websites and the
blogosphere like wild fire. Then Sony’s patch can lead to a crashed
system and data loss. Sony still makes people whose systems have been
effected jump through hoops just to get an uninstaller. Nothing about
the rootkit is in the End User License Agreements (EULAs,) and who
reads a EULA for a music CD anyway?

Problem is that the same demographic of people that would have bought
the PSP are CD music consumers too. It’s unusual for Sony to be
technologically short sighted. Though they have repeated some of the
same mistakes such as putting proprietary formated software on
previous music players.

The PSP has had issues with firmware updates that were fake floating
around the internet that “bricked” the PSP and made them unusable.
Sony has taken a hard line against the creation of home-brew software
for the PSP which is another sore spot with gamers. Meanwhile the PSP
sat on the shelves in the US throughout the Christmas rush.

There are only about 80 games for the PSP right now. Almost all of
them art ports of existing franchises. The games are also available
for the DS too which is only about $129.00. So with the PSP’s at
$249.00 and the extra features on it such as the web browser
capability being in question, there hasn’t been a real reason to
spend the extra $120.00 to get one. It plays music, but lots of
people have an iPod. My pink and white DS looks great next to my
white iPod. I plan to get them matching iPod Socks.

Sure, the PSP has a big screen. But the DS has two screens. High tech
when it comes to geeky goods is not the deciding factor alone. The
games and applications for the DS and the two screens are more fun.
Nintendo has a better online gaming network than Sony does. Sony even
doesn’t have one for the PSP. What is up with Sony being so far
behind on the PS2 console in online gaming as well? You guys are
seriously letting us down here.

I heard that in Japan the DS outsold the PSP 5 to 1. The Nintendo DS
has sold about 5.44 million in Japan and about about 2.8 million here
in the US. Nintendo has a crazy huge number for combined U.S. market
penetration of 75 – 80 percent.  Estimates are that the DS has sold
around 10 million worldwide or soon will. The PSP has sold about only
2.5 million in both the USA and Japan, when you add Europe it’s maybe
about 6 million all together.

When you look at the games offered you run into the Nintendo
juggernauts such as Nintendogs which has sold about 1.5 million
copies in the U.S. Nintendo reported U.S. sales of Mario Kart alone
sold like another million copies. Nintendo DS has around 115 present
tiles out, with 30 or more games planed for the new year. It also
plays the Game Boy Advance line of games too which has an enormous
catalog of 850 games.

Once again Nintendo in its characteristic underdog fashion has
triumphed. It isn’t in numbers only. They do their best to put the
fun into their products. They don’t make things that are sexy or
adult. But they do manage to appeal to the kid that is inside all
adult gamers and teens. They make us laugh and do kooky things. When
you want to relax from a day of being on the run, or when you are
waiting around instead of having stress, the games on the DS are
going to make you smile. Some of them such as Meteos includes new age
music tracks that you can play with and customize. The pretty colored
hardware, the innovative games and both the fun and relaxation
factors have made the DS the Queen of Handheld consoles.