It Must be the Time of Year – Sony Savages DS – Full Story Inside

In my opinion, the best analogy for the two is that of two different movies sharing the same box office. Such as Legally Blonde 2 and Sin City. They are in somewhat direct competition for overall movie viewing, but do indeed appeal to different audiences. (prob. a better example would be two movies in the same general genre such as Bad Boys 2 and I Robot, but I used the extreme example to get the idea across).

However, I feel that you guys have strayed from the point enough to confirm it. Sony was writing off the DS as being not a "treat" or "competition". This is just completely not true. Its like saying that, in the example of Bad Boys 2 and I Robot, 80% of the people rated action very highly(games), another 60% enjoyed a good amount of comedy in their movies(versatility), and another 10% preferred their movies to have more action and suspense with minimal interference like comedy(price).
These are in no way a accurate representation of the gaming demographic's wants. However, I feel that it shows how it would be stupid for Bad Boys 2 to write off I Robot as not appealing to the same market or even more so, not even being in competition with. His statement about Nintendo only capturing the pokemon audience is like Bad Boys 2 saying only those that like movies with action and only action are in direct competition with them; leaving out the most important determining factors.

Overall I agree with the idea that he actually meant, "The idea of a handheld rivalry with Nintendo is an irrelevance." But I also conclude that that is 100% wrong.

My logic is as follows:
1. appeal of games+movies+music > just games.
2. added features and versatility+third party games+better graphics >= almost only first party games+price
3. Nintendo DS's sales > PSP's sales
Conclusion = high quality games are the primary determining factor in the purchase of a system capable of portable gaming. The PSP is more appealing in every category but games, and yet is losing the battle. Therefore the PSP's primary competition(aka "rivalry") is that of the DS's games.

Just my two cents.

I liked your last respons Tyrion, hopefully I'll warrent one =P.

I like this analogy better than wanderingsoul 's PC/Mac comparison. Yours gets across the limited market idea we need. However (and here I go again) I still think it misses something.

Try this one;

Art house cinema verses Multiplex. The art house cinema is very focused on what it shows, it has a very dedicated following, but little "mass market" appeal. The Multiplex shows a wider spread of film types and appeals to a larger market. Both "compete" for the same limited pool of money available to people who want to see a film, but they have different offerings, one focused the other broad.

This gets across my ideas on what the Sony guy was trying to say, but also keeps in mind the limited pot of money.


This is just a re-telling of the stereotypical Nintendo audience: people who like "kiddy" games.

Please Note: I don't agree with this, but I think that's where he's coming from. He's using this example to enforce the "different markets" hence "no competition" idea.


I'd argue 100%, I think it's about 60% wrong, i.e. 60% of the potential market for PSP crosses over with the market for DS in wanting a games machine only. The other 40% is filled with tech whores, mobile movie people, music people who don't want an iPod and the convergence crowd.


I think we are also seeing a cultural thing here.

Japanese people love the DS for quirky games and Nintendo loyalty. The PSP isn't such a good offering at the moment. The fact that the DS is outselling everything else combined in hardware sales is off the scale.

Americans have a stronger Nintendo loyalty than the UK in general. Again, not too many games for the PSP that ring their bells. OTOH decent sales of UMD movies points to a widening market.

Europe is a wild card, we have no massive loyalty in general, but have been a big Sony stronghold recently. Maybe this is due to the games and the PSP will launch flat, but maybe not.

The lack of games is a worry on both systems. However I believe it is just the post-launch dip that most platforms experience. The DS, having launched earlier, is climbing out earlier. Having GBA back-compat hasn't hurt either.

I think it will be fun to see what happens after another year. See where we are then. I think the PSP will claw back some share, but will it be enough to satisfy Sony and allow them to continue the line?


Eeek! Hope I lived up to it! :-)

Phil Harrison is a little bit.. well.. he said all that to spur responses, but I have never thought of the PSP as a gaming handheld or competition. It's more of a dust collection tool right now... There's quite a bit of games I have to play for my DS.. and I haven't bought a Movie UMD in a loooooooong time.

But I disagree with his assumption that Nintendo is stepping out of the technical race.

I guess he didn't notice the subversive forward steps in the Game Boy Micro. The Micro has three intentions.

1. Set a precedent where the next Game Boy will have a metal chassis and similar customization options.

2. Wean people off of the old GB/GBC games in an attempt to allow greater progress in the successors CPU without the design issue of including the older CPUs.

3. Reset the sizes, so the next Game Boy just needs to have a larger screen than the Micro. In fact, the new Game Boy will have a different shaped screen than the DS, that won't really be "bigger." It will be hella sharp though.. o_O

Nintendo has already announced the screen resolution for the next Game Boy as far back as 2002, and it looks like their recent dealings with ARM means the ARM11e will be part of the new unit. (The DS uses an ARM9e. The ARM11e is a more capable chip. Right now it looks like a 64-bit ARM11e with an additional GPU for the next unit... Which would pretty much outclass the single use 32-Bit MIPS M5000 in the PSP. The PSP has two of those, but only one at a time can be used. One for games, one for multi-media.)

Nintendo is still in the technical race, but it's nice that Sony does not notice the quiet rumblings in the background. Makes it a lot easier.

I feel we are somewhat on the same page, tyrion. And I concede to your wisdom on the matter.

One thing about the 100% wrong thing. I was stating that Mr. Harrison's statement as a whole is wrong. I agreed to some extent that about 80% of the market between the PSP and the DS are shared (that was my prob. confusingly worded 80, 60, 20 attraction part).

However, your 60/40 idea might be more in line when you factor in just the general versatility of the PSP. In that same train of though, supposedly as you know the DS is supposed to get some added versatility in the whole pda arena. But that is of course yet to be seen, and I'm starting to get off topic.

As a final thought, in a year or more likely in a year and a half, its very possible we'll be in an entirely different situation with the impending launch of the Game Boy 2. Or at least I believe that is the general idea. Now how this will shape the portable gaming arena is only speculation, but it will have at least a heavily defining effect.

Tyrion Wrote

You, as Spong, never cease to please =P. (yeah, that was kinda shameless, heh.)

Ah, Mr Harrison. His fighting stance is very Tybalt for he clearly has no love lost for any Romeo (Nintendo or MS).

There's a distinct lack of respect for the enemy at play here which is a shame. I remember things used to be less cut throat back in the 16bit days.

Indeed no matter what they tell us. PSP and DS are both handheld consoles and both with battle for our attention and money, whether with or without intent against the other.

I notice he mentioned some crap about Pokemon when Pokemon hasn't even reached the DS itself yet. Nintendo havet even needed to push Pokemon onto DS so fast because the likes of Daigasso Band Bros, Electroplankton, Trauma Center, Nintendogs and more recently Jump Superstars are doing the business for Nintendo. Famitsu and word of mouth will do the rest

I find them broadening the market (kind of like MS want to do but perhaps different too) to non gamers is a good idea. The female aspect is good for gaming (once I get my Nintendogs I'll be testing it out on the females just to see how they respond).

Lastly, what has happened to the DS release list in the releases section Spong? Surely there's more planned and that needs an update. I'm sure if you cover all three regions in it (since some games won't reach us) you'd get a better DS picture.

Tyrion, you have to realize that nearly every analogy is flawed because it is a comparison between to unlike things, therefore any comparison will most likely be flawed in one way or another. With analogies we are speaking in terms of generality, not specifics. I mean, I could use the music industry as an analogy to the DS vs. PSP. On one hand you could say that Rap appeals to urban youth while adult contemporary appeals to adults. They aren't exactly in direct competition with each other, but specific artists vie for the top spot on the Top 40 charts, but even that analogy is flawed through internet piracy among others. Even saying the operation of a computer presents and interesting analogy to the working of the brain is flawed because it has been proven that a human mind functions quite differently than a computer's CPU. Nearly every analogy is innacurate in some respect because it is what it is, a comparison of things that are alike in some respects but are otherwise dissimilar.

post deleted due to being a drunken misreading of repied to post

Oh yeah, I agree with you here. There analogies that are "better" than others though. A better analogy will get your point across without having to educate your audience on the topic at hand. If you come up with a bad analogy it can damage your argument.

The good thing about discussion boards like these forums is that we can come to a consensus on what is a good analogy, taking an initial idea and expanding on it or just starting from scratch. It's all part of a healthy debate.

Oh come on! You can't delete it entirely, just edit it to say you were drunk and have had second thoughts or something! :-)

OK, I'm replying to myself, but I've just found better figures that the ones I estimated up in my post above.


OK, recent figures from Sony via Tom's Hardware Guide.





I've also seen figures posted on the BBC that say five million PSPs have been sold in JP and US.



OK, so with those figures, we have 5,000,000 sold in 15 months (9 in Japan, 6 in the USA) - an average of 333333 units per month or seven per minute - one every 8.5 seconds. Dunno how that compares to other consoles, but there are the often used figures for you guys to mull over.

Add to that an attach rate of 1.8 for games and 1.64 for movies. Assuming the license Sony gets for a movie is similar to that for a game, this is equivalent to another console having an attach rate of 3.44 - not too shabby.

OK, there are the figures for the PSP, I don't have any definite figures for the DS, so I'll leave that to others.