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In
playgrounds across the land a great war of words is occurring
Children, and in most cases their parents as well, are
arguing till they are blue-in-the-face over an issue, which in a lot
of cases, they have very little clue about. The people are divided;
they do not seem to be able to accept that the two things that they
argue about both have merits, only that one is great and the other
can only described by the use of expletives. One is a recent upstart
using style and refinement and the other is an advancement based
upon years of development. They are really not even that similar,
but you are only getting one of them this Christmas... It’s that
argument, the heavyweights of the portable world; The SONY PSP
versus the NintendoDS.
So,
contestant number one - SONY’s PSP. The system certainly has its
good points, and there are also plenty bad. Let’s start with the
bad; the PSP is expensive, especially for a handheld console, in
fact, an RRP of £179.99 makes the PSP the most expensive mainstream
handheld console ever. It’s also quite fragile, and it is
essential that a hard case is bought for it to replace the flimsy
Slip Case given with the Value Pack and Giga Pack
options. There has also been a lot of dogging over the limited
battery life, as little as two-and-a-half hours while playing games;
not particularly impressive at all. Then there is the dire Launch
Line-Up, which, while often impressive,  clearly failed to spark the
light of ingenuity with the gaming press; when a fairly average Golf
game is regarded as your best Launch Title, questions need to be
asked. To be fair, there are a lot of better titles on the way - but
still, even though there is a decent-ish Grand Theft Auto
expedition, there is nothing outstanding at the moment. As Halo:
Combat Evolved, Super Mario World and Tetris have
proved, software makes a console, but this lesson seems to have
passed SONY by.
But
people would not pay one hundred and eighty quid if it was bad
though, would they? A major factor in the sales of the PSP is the
fact that it is very cool. Its sleek black (and in the case of the
stunning Limited Edition Japanese model, Ceramic White) look and
functionality make it the perfect weapon in the fight against the
Apple iPod for the general publics’ disposable income. In a market
already flooded with MP3 Players, there is a push for more “cool
gadgets” that do more than merely play music and SONY have already
established themselves as the top players in the field. The PSP is
only around £10 more expensive than the new must have accessory,
the iPod Nano. Although the PSP Value Pack boasts nowhere
near the capacity of the iPod Nano, it does boast far greater
functionality and with the release of the Giga Pack, can
compete with the current MP3 Players, albeit with a slightly higher
price tag. It also trounces its newest fashionable video
competition, the Video iPod. The PSP has the highest resolution
screen ever released in the commercial market and when watching
movies, it shows and although the sound may not be quite as crisp as
the Video iPod, the compression software available seems to be of a
higher quality and, of course, the Video iPod does not play games at
a PlayStation2 level of quality, or browse the internet.
So
what chance do Nintendo have with a handheld that, at the moment,
only plays games? Well, it plays those games very, very well. The
only real downside is that it doesn’t play music and video, an
issue that Nintendo hope to resolve with the European release of the
Play-Yan Cartridge. Play-Yan allows video and music to be stored on
an SD FLASH card  and played on the NintendoDS and although it
is doubtful that this will be at the same level of quality as the
PSP, it is a start. The NintendoDS is admittedly not as sleek in its
design as the PSP, a factor which is influencing people more and
more. The NintendoDS is also not as powerful as the PSP, although
Nintendo have not released the exact specifications to the public.
Well,
the first great point is that with an RRP of £89.99 the NintendoDS
is half the price of the PSP. Nintendo are also bundling Nintendogs,
a title that can really only be described as revolutionary - the
NintendoDS bundle is now on shelves at around £100 with the game.
The games are also cheaper, with a typical RRP between £29.99 and
£34.99, as opposed to the PSP’s software library, with a common
RRP of £39.99 - and this is where Nintendo’s heritage comes into
play; even though they may be cheap, the games are, in general,
superb, and NintendoDS owners can expect many excellent games in the
future using Nintendo’s own Intellectual Properties. At the
moment, titles such as Super Mario64 DS, Advance Wars:
Dual Strike, CastleVania: Dawn of Sorrow and Mario
KartDS are starting to show the high quality of games that can
be expected and along with Nintendogs, Project Rub, WarioWare
Touched! and Lost In Blue are demonstrating the unique
types of game that can only be played on the NintendoDS.
The
addition of a Touch Screen changes gaming on this system far more
than you might think. As well as functioning as an Analogue Stick,
the Touch Screen can also be used as a Keyboard, a feature utilised
by the NintendoDS’ built-in Wi-Fi communication software PictoChat,
as well as a drawing tool and gives NintendoDS games an infinitely
customisable control panel. Then45.JPG) there is the Microphone - not a
particularly useful piece of hardware you might think, but then you
probably have not played Nintendogs or Project Rub;
games that use the microphone for many different functions from
Voice Recognition to blowing bubbles and boat sailing.
All-in-all
these two systems - which are regularly compared directly - are not
as similar as you might assume. It is true that they both play
games, however those games are, a lot of the time, very different.
So the simple question you must ask yourself before buying one of
these systems is: What do I want from my handheld? Let’s assume
you are an image conscious person and you want a new and interesting
toy that plays video and music as well as a few games, well you go
for the PSP. What about if you are a gamer who enjoys playing great,
innovative games? Then the NintendoDS is the system for you. But
ultimately, with both systems being excellent pieces of hardware, it
will always be down to personal choice.
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