Food for Thought: 4th Gen Parallels in American Market

[Final-Fan]

Yes there are; however, not as many as one might think. The Game Gear had an extreme technological advantage over the Game Boy: for one thing, it had COLOR. On the other hand, it had an abominable battery life, which was very expensive (and extremely annoying) unless you sprang for the (also expensive?) rechargable battery pack. And both systems, despite their differences, had the same fundamental control scheme.

(The battery life issue in particular is what killed off many of the Game Boy's technologically superior foes without it ever really even noticing the competition. The PSP is doing much better largely because it doesn't have to plow through AA batteries like a chain smoker.)

The PSP's technology is better than the DS's, but not THAT much better; the PSP's screen is better than the DS's, but not THAT much better (and the DS has two); the DS's battery life is better than the PSP's, but not THAT much better. But they are two fundamentally different machines, even ignoring cartridge vs. UMD.

The DS plays games -- that's its first and foremost function, and everything else is a DISTANT second. The PSP, on the other hand, is also firstly a game machine, but its other functions are much more robust, numerous, and, well, important to the PSP's userbase. There's mod/homebrew, much more popular on the PSP (AFAIK). And I don't think anyone needs to be told about the radically different control/screen interface.