Wired is running an article that seems to imply that Sony is in fact going to take over the hand held market with one fail swoop when the PSP debuts. Sure I think Nintendo has reason to worry, but I think they are neglecting a small key fact here…. If Johnny Q. Public has a GBA with 25 games and the PSP comes out and is awesome, his parents will be a little reluctant to toss that library of games out and start fresh. The backwards compatability that the GB/GBA has maintained has been a huge selling point for newer versions of the system.
It seems almost ironic to me that this isn’t discussed since I firmly believe it is the only reason the PS2 sold as well as it did. People had become loyal to Sony and the new console played their old games. Why would you switch to a different brand console. Microsoft and Nintendo have been playing catchup ever since. I think the PSP is going to sell well, but with all the added features, the price won’t be able to match that of a straight up portable gaming machine.
The author seems to have mixed up his facts because he says “The PSP (short for PlayStation Portable) reportedly would have graphics capabilities close to that of a PlayStation 2.” Unless things changed, this is supposed to be a portable Playstation, not a PS2. I seriously doubt they could make a portable PS2 with any type of decent battery life at this stage in the game.
Source: Wired
