I see a lot of people complaining that the touch screen is just useless and will not be used in any meaninful way. That is to be seen, however, compared to the PSP, it without a doubt superior. I'll explain: first, look at this picture:
This is the underlining hardware behind the analog "nub" of the PSP. As you can see, there's only 4 communication ports to it. That means 2^4 = 16 possible outputs it can produce, or 16 different directions of movement (and apparently the degree of movement isn't measured from the reports I've read). Since a regular touchpad has 8 possible directions, that makes the analog nub just a touchpad with twice the number of buttons. The Xbox touchpad has 16 possible directions I believe, so it's just an touch-"nub" equivalent to an Xbox controller but harder to control. For all intent and purposes the PSP has no analog control method either, so you can complain all you want about the touchscreen, but in the end it's still something versus nothing.
My opinion is that the touchscreen will allow for the playing of FPS's far, far superior on a DS than on a PSP, making it a lot more popular in western markets than the PSP. The use of RTS games could hypothetically open up totally new sectors of the market (e.g. S. Korea). A port of Starcraft and a bunch of other RTSs gives the DS a much wider selection of potential killer apps than the PSP could hope to obtain. Plus it has every game the GBA has. On the other hand, I'm of the opinion that the PSP will get little other than ports since it has nothing worthwhile to offer over the PS2 except being portable, and in some cases less since it has no real analog control method.
Sony is out of it's league here IMO. Unlike Microsoft, who's Xbox offered Internet gaming and a HD alongside better graphics relative to the PS2 (and of course Halo as well
), the PSP only offers better graphics over the DS, and less control and battery life to boot, and apparently no killer apps. While graphics certain will draw its converts, it alone, as Xbox has demostrated, means nothing in the big picture.
Yes, of course the PSP also offers movies and mp3 playback. But you'll have to buy those movies (brand new media means buying a PSP copy of everything you may already have), and with a highly limited potential market I see virtually no movies at all unless the PSP takes off, which I don't see either. Audio playback is a joke: memory cards are expensive as hell with a 1GB memory card costing hundreds, versus a Ipod or even one of those cheap Ipod clones it's much too expensive. Only games matter in the end, and PSP isn't delievering there, and has less capability to do so over the DS. In short isn't appealing other than being good to look at despite what all you PSP supporters say. People, at least me, won't buy a gaming device merely because it looks good, instead they buy what they feel will entertain them, and that appears to be the DS.
