Sega Game Gear? Ha! It was about as much a challenge to the reigning king in its day, the Nintendo Gameboy, as a beer league football team would be against the Steelers. Fact is, Nintendo has been pretty much unchallenged in the handheld gaming arena since the original Gameboy, continuing right through to the DS.
Until now, that is.
With the latest generation of handhelds, Nintendo is facing some strong competition from the Sony PSP, or Playstation Portable. It’s not exactly a neck-and-neck race, but the PSP is winning in some parts of the world. This is something that Nintendo has never had to face with previous generations of handheld systems. Sony’s PSP is not going to disappear like the Sega Game Gear and most other competitors from past years.
The question that many people are asking – especially people planning to buy a portable gaming system – is this: Is the Sony PSP a better investment than the Nintendo DS?
Let’s answer this important question by breaking it down into 4 important sub-questions that will ultimately tell us the handheld that will define this generation of portable gaming.
1. Which console is more powerful? This is a no contest, really. The Sony PSP is designed for power, with two 333MHz processors rendering game play and fantastic graphics. The screen of PSP alone is built for widescreen gaming. And its games consume more digital space than Nintendo DS titles. A Nintendo DS game is usually less than 100MB. A Sony PSP game ranges from 300MB to 1.5GB. WINNER: Sony PSP.
2. Which unit has more available games? Many people believe that software creates hardware, rather than the reverse. After all, what good is an extremely powerful handheld if there are no games available for it? When it comes to the size of the games library, the Nintendo DS is the obvious winner. Its games library is almost 4 times bigger than the PSP’s. Many companies develop games strictly on the DS. WINNER: Nintendo DS.
3. Which system has better multimedia capabilities? Many of today’s gadgets perform specialized functions. Ipods play music.
PDAs allow mobile browsing and data mining. Digital cameras take pictures and videos. Cellular phones serve as personal organizers aside from being communication devices. However, the trend these days is for a gadget to at least attempt to become a Swiss knife of sorts for the technology-crazy market.
Handhelds are no different. The more functions they serve, the better they will appear for potential buyers. The Nintendo DS play limited audio and video files. The Sony PSP can play many audio formats and an accepted MP4 file type for videos. The Sony PSP can also surf the web, store a variety of data, act as a TV (with the aid of a TV tuner), and serve as a remote controller for the Playstation 3, even if the console is in another continent. WINNER: Sony PSP.
4. Which console has more exclusives? No doubt, not a single company can compete with Nintendo. The Nintendo DS is the home of original properties like Mario, Zelda, Metroid, Pokemon , Donkey Kong, Kirby, Animal Crossing and many more. These are the biggest selling points of the system. WINNER: Nintendo DS.
The bottom line? A 2-2 tie. The better system will really depend on what you expect from your handheld gaming system. If you want the most functions and raw power, the PSP is the way to go. But if you’re looking for a deep library of games with a varied gaming experience, choose the Nintendo DS.
