I descided in light of the recent NPD sales charts that I would take the time to look at the handheld war that is still being waged. Whether its Nintendo's knight in shining armour , Sony's spiffy assasin or Nintendo's sidekick all three platform's continue to wage war on one another in a close knit fight.

Nintendo:DS has secured the number one position their is no turning back Nintendo has won this generation as far as handheld's are concerned. Outselling PSP in Japan almost if not 3 to 1 and now outselling PSP in North America about 4 to 1 the Nintendo DS is invicable. The Nintendo DS sold an impressive 508,000 units in the United States alone for the month of March.

 PlayStationPortable continues to do poorly in the handheld wars though they did manage to yet again secure the second position on the monthly charts. The PSP had some tight competition from the GameBoy:Advance but managed to outsell it by almost 40,000 units. PSP performed midly this month at 180,000 units.

The GameBoy:Advance Nintendo's sidekick console backing DS the whole way. The GameBoy:Advance has been support less for months. Nintendo descided to ditch the GBA and pursue its DS and Wii market shares more agressively but that hasn't stopped the GBA from chugging along. For the month of March the GameBoy Advance outsold the PlayStation3 by more then 10,000 Units and at 148,000 units continues to stay healthy.

The battle is over but the war goes on. With the DS now leages ahead of PlayStationPortable in the monthly charts Sony is left with another competitor nobody could see comming the GameBoy:Advance. With Pokemon Diamond/Pearl only days from release the DS sales will continue to climb likely to almost a million for the month of Ma. The release of Diamond/Pearl will drive other consumers back towards Pokemon and the GameBoy:Advance Pokemon titles this renewal of software/hardware sales could give it the kick it needs to take on PlayStationPortable again for months to come when Christmas roles around the GBA's cheap price could allow it to possibly even beat PSP in monthly sales!

So a tight race between PSP/GBA many Nintendo fans laugh off the idea of GBA making a temporary come back but could it rise to the challenge of PSP? , could Sony's handheld once again fall victim to the might of Nintendo's GameBoy:Advance? Could this renew software support from third/first party developer's?

haha, this thread is silly. 1st off, the DS isn't even outselling the PSP by 3:1 ratio in America. So I dunno where you're getting your 4:1 number. I'll give you that the GBA is selling surprisingly well and we may see some renewed developer support for the system. But there is no way the GBA outsells the PSP in the coming months. If it happens, you can fry a couple of eggs on my face because I'd deserve it. The PSP just had a price cut. Sales are gonna rise. Expect a big month of April for the PSP.

Sorry my bad.

As for the PSP price cut having any affect, I doubt it.

With Pokemon Diamond/Pearl launching it will have little to no affect on the large gaming audience. The sales of DS will skyrocket from their already strong position. GBA sales should also benefit due to an increase in demand for Pokemon's other titles. Pokemon is expected to make a major comeback in the next few months and the craze should really help GameBoyAdvances sales.

PSP, I haven't heard of many big titles comming any time soon. I did here about FinalFantasy remakes comming to PSP and that will likely benefit it when they start to actually make appearances on the platform but untill then not likely. People will see DS's every where as people play their new copies of Diamond/Pear. DS will get major publicity which should push PSP further from the limelight.

In the end PSP isn't going anywhere (As in for good) but its definatly not going to benefit from that measly price cut! 

i dunno how the DS sales are gonna skyrocket when there's barely enough supply to meet the current demand. The DS should get more publicity tho as you say. Thing is, the PSP and DS market are just so different that I don't think they overlap as much as you make it seem. Basically, I don't think the people that were seriously considering the PSP are going to immediately rush out and get a DS because of Pokemon. Anyway, we'll have to wait and see how the PSP price cut affects sales, but in April I'm expecting it to do just as well as the 360, which should have a good month with the release of the Elite.

I think its stupid to talk about how the psp is failling in the handheld market, unlike the console market they are making money on the psp and they have already sold a solid amount and sales are quite steady, who said they need to take over the whole market, i see a lot of games comming out for psp, they got developper support, i think both DS and psp can be considered succesful as far as handheld market goes, personaly i have both a psp and a ds, i like ds for strategy games such as advance wars and mageknight while i like the psp for rpg and fps games such as untold legends and socom2, i believe the handhelds have a longer lifetime then the main consoles aswell so i would b surprised if ds sold around 100 mil and psp 50 mil by the end of their lifetime, which i would say would be huge success for both. As for the psp price cut i think it will have effect in the long term if not in the immediate as in console sales will remain steady or grow over time rather then falling. And i think theres no doubt sony will stay in the handheld market for another generation and obviously nintendo will always be there, and maybe microsoft will join in next gen too.

Firstly, get this out the way.

The DS has sold just over 40m WW, whereas the PSP has sold 21-22m.  The DS has whipped the PSP ass with regards to sales.

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.

Anyway, as a footnote.  Although the Handheld war between the PSP and the DS looks to have been won.  This generation of handhelds is far from finished.  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. 

 Which just goes to show the smaller portion of the market that is governed by 'harcore' 'mature' gamers if the PSP is supposed to be suited them does it not?

But saying that they are suited to different markets and they aren't competing against each other directly is a moot argument, GameCube had a different market than the PS2 did it not? It was aimed at a different subsection of the market but that still means the PS2 kicked the GameCube's arse.  

The problem with the difference in install base is the amount of money that devs can make on either console, having TWICE the user base when you are at the 20's of millions point is a big deal.

What does it matter that people that were considering a PSP wont go and buy a DS? Hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people will be upgrading from GBA to DS because of Pokemon... many GBA's were sold SIMPLY for people to play Pokemon on... there is no disputing the fact that Pokemon is going to be huge for DS.  However it might just serve to raise the demand for a console that is already so hard to come by.  I really wonder if Nintendo are going to raise production, I don't even know if they physically can... they are selling probably 1.5mil DS a month WW at the current rate and that can only increase.  Maybe they produce 2mil a month?

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?

Nintendo has won the handheld war, but how the PSP ultimately fairs is up in the air. I think Sony has to be satisfied if it can stay on track as do half what the DS does. However since the Lite has come out the DS has done better than 2 to 1 over the PSP in virtually every market. Unless the price cut, or a soon to be released PSP Lite, makes a big difference, than I see the PSP ultimately selling only 30-40% of what the DS does world wide. The DS is a monster right that can't be stopped.

However the PSP will be very successful. I'm predicting a 40-50 million sell through rate for it, and while it won't look like much compared to the 100-120 million the DS sells it still will set up another interesting, and potentially more competitive, battle between the PSP2 and Nintendo's next handheld.

Although I think that Nintendo has dominated the PSP, and that the PSP's loss should be a shining example of how analysts are often wrong (initially they said that the PSP would dominate out of the gate, followed by how it would outsell the DS by the end of 2007) I think the PSP has done pretty well for itself. 20 Million consoles sold in 2 years is a pretty decent performance and it will likely sell 30 to 35 million units in its lifetime.