The Handheld Wars!

[Joelcool7]

davygee said:

 

Now where does the GBA come in.....?

Are there very strong sales of the GBA at the moment? I don't understand why your comparing the PSP with the GBA. The GBA has sold loads more units than even the DS over the course of its life and yes people still play them, especially really young kids. But I don't see why or how the GBA is competing with the PSP.

There is easily another 3 or 4 years left in both the DS and the PSP, especially the PSP, so it's not over til the fat lady sings.

I am comparing the GBA monthly sales to the PSP monthly sales because GBA is like only a small percentage point behind Sony's PSP in the monthly sales charts. This means that while GBA isn't selling as well as PSP it is the PSP's closest competitor at the moment. The real fight right now is betwen PSP and GBA, PSP can't even be considered competition for the DS at the moment and with pokemon making its appearance it'll be along time before PSP can come close enough monthly to being a competitor with DS.

So yes GBA is still very popular if Nintendo continues with another price cut by years end, maybe port EarthBound2 (Mother3) and drop some software prices they could very easily compete with PSP this holiday season and even next holiday season. DreamCast continued competing in Japan beating X-Box the whole generation the whole way to 2006 despite Sega having bailed on it. GameBoy:Advance is a force to be reckoned with and if third parties (Indy studios) continue to support GBA and Nintendo continues tocut prices to its hardware and first party software by lets say 10$ a year it could continue selling another 3 years, Micro is currently like (39.99CDN).

Once Nintendo cuts hardware prices to 9.99CDN (5.99USD) they could officially drop their liscensing process and turn it open source allowing anyone to publish games for it. This would benefitthe smallest indy studios who can't afford Nintendo's fees etc...etc... and intern keep the GBA alive another year or so.

Now of course I don't expect GBA to over take PSP in monthly(weekly) sales (Unless EarthBound2 /Mother3) sees release. But the GBA will remain Sony's closest competition for a while longer as long as Nintendo maintain's manufacturer support.

Lastly the war is far from over and I'm sure by the end of it Sony may have almost 40-million PSP's sold but I highly doubt it could over take the DS. Even a new Final Fantasy title lets say Final Fantasy 14 couldn't put the PSP in any position to compete with Nintendo's DS. Their just isn't enough third party support for PSP and the support they've got isn't unique enough all it got untill now is pretty much port after port after port. How is PSP going to survive when PS2 is finally finished and their's nothing new to port? Are third parties honestly going to maintain support when it starts costing them bigger budgets then DS?