The handheld market will getting its very own showdown at high noon, if rumours are to be believed, when the current undisputed king of portable gaming Nintendo face off against the plucky newcomer Sony for day one sales success in the UK.
The current feeling is on the 18th March 2005 both Sony's PSP and Nintendo's DS will hit the shelves and try to entice gamers to buy them. The key factors in who will win the most customers are surly price and most importantly - launch titles.
Currently the PSP is expected to be the more expensive of the two at around £200, probably due to the sheer number of features built into the handheld and the mature brand that Sony is aiming at. Nintendo will no doubt try to aggressively undercut Sony on price, with a possible price of between £100-£150, due to the machine being of a lower spec, despite having two screens. So 1-up for Nintendo?
Which leads us to games. At E3 Sony's PSP demo’s looked jaw dropping, with a version of Grand Turismo Mobile looking particularly superb. Other showings were Metal Gear Acid, Wipeout Pure and a Ridge Racer game also in the pipeline. With Sony providing launch titles of well known franchises this will give PSP's gamers the chance to play all their favourites portable. Sony also have the backing of many major software developers to bolster the titles available.
Nintendo have an ace up their sleeve though - backwards compatibility. Nintendo already has a large user base with its GBA and Gameboy handhelds and with the promise of being able to play the titles already available on the new system, It gives them the distinct advantage. The launch titles will no doubt be Mario based, with versions of Mario 64 and Mario Kart talked about at E3 and a DS version of Metroid Prime is also in the works.
If they do decided to go head to head, it's going to be one hell of a fight and it'll be interesting to see what tricks (and treats) they come up with to convince us to part with our money.
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