Well, the Xbox 360 is sure doing a good job in the video game industry, even if it only exists as a monopoly on the operating system market. I guess the Nintendo DS is just too powerful for it to be taken down by a Microsoft handheld.

Uhh the PSP aint getting killed that bad. Here in the good ole' USA the standings currently sit at, 1 : 1.51 , thats actually pretty close. Japan might be DS CRAZY, but that means jack shite to me. All of these are in the top 35 on this weeks charts. And they are all GARBAGE in my book, wouldnt pay $5 for any of them . (I coulda kept going much longer) Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan! 2 More Brain Training Momotaro Electric Railway DS: Tokyo and Japan Pokemon Diamond / Pearl More English Training for Adults Brain Training Custom Beat Battle Draglade Common Sense Training (???) Prof. Layton and the Mysterious Village Panel de Pon DS World Puzzle Mojipittan DS English Training for Adults Kanji Performance Test 1000 Healthy DS Recipes Kanji Quiz DS Cuisine Navigator JUST BECAUSE A BAJILLION !JAPANESSE GIRLS! BUY A DS DOESNT MAKE IT "BETTER" THEN A PSP. Matter of fact it makes it LESS cool in book. from the top 100 on both US and Japanese charts I found 3 DS games that appealed to me. (New SMB, Sim City, Mario Kart)

Lame post! You sight US sales as an area that the PSP is doing well yet you pick the games from the top 35 games in the Japanese market of which you mention 16 which you think are complete garbage and then go on to say that the DS isn't cool because Japanese girls are buying it. Once again I say LAME POST! Firstly, why is it a bad thing that the DS caters for many different people? And does that make the PSP 'cooler' because they haven't branched out at the same level as the DS? What is it that you dislike the DS? And what kind of games on the PSP are your favourite if you only like NSMB, Simcity and Mario Kart? And Sorry. PSP IS doing that badly, it's not meeting anyone expectations dispite it's great power and great software lineup. If it as an entity by itself maybe it would be doing OKAYISH but it's available at the same time as the DS unfortunately and the DS makes anything else look like dog turd at the moment. I'm not bagging the quality of the PSP or its games, it's actually a pretty cool system, it's just Lame to see an argument squewed like that by including only the relevant facts that you choose to back up your argument while ignoring all the other positives.

There is one other significant reason MS would be reluctant to release a handheld - and no one has touched on it yet.

MS's software development technique (and chain) is designed around maximising potential of POWERFUL computers. They like to develop an OS, use libraries, drivers, layer their code with APIs, have a hard-disk for virtual memory usage, and so on.

MS would *never* develop a piece of hardware as "tight" as the DS (something that requires solid assembler coding to maximise it properly, uses direct memory address programming and so on).

Its simply against their philosophy. They could do it - but with a lot of pain, and little efficency in the process. This would blow the cost out, and make it much less competitive against other devices.

...

When handhelds literally become small PCs (hard disks, lots of memory, fast 3d-accelerated chipsets) expect to see MS jump into the market - because it will be easy for them. Much of their software would be easy to port to the device as well. Until then, I think they are just experimenting (i.e. such as with the Zune).

Its going to be interesting to see what MS do about mobile phones next. That will be the next big threat to their PC dominance, as phones will (soon) be able to replace PCs completely (the main thing they are lacking is a sophisticated OS - something Nokia is working on). 

Well you've done exactly the same.  The PSP IS doing well (not badly), but when compared to the DS it doesn't look that good because the DS is a freak phenomenon.

Also, the DS and the PSP were not released at the same time WW.  The DS was released in November 2004 in Japan, December 2004 in NA and March 2005 in Europe whereas the PSP was released in December 2004 in Japan, March 2005 in NA and September 2005 in Europe.  I'm not stating these release date differences as the reason the DS has sold much more than the PSP.  But I just thought it is so information that is required. 

At least the PSP is doing far better than the Nokia N-Gage, Zodiac, Gizmondo, and many other portables. In fact, the PSP has done better than any other portable, not made by Nintendo. In fact, the PSP has defeated the Gameboy Micro, which still isn't saying much. It also defeated the Virtual Boy, which really isn't saying much.

MS is focused on Zune Pc gaming and the 360....thats why there isnt one.. the 360 will succeed but i think them trying to bring live to pc gaming isnt a good idea and i think zune wont be that spectacular either

Yes indeed. 22.85 million sold after 2.5 years is a complete and total disaster. Nevermind the fact that it took the Xbox and Gamecube 5 years to achieve this, and the PSP will most likely overtake the Genesis and N64 by the end of next year, possibly even the SNES one day.

 And if the PSP is doing badly, then so is the 360, which is outsold by the PSP every month.

I think the 360 IS doing badly though... it's not selling enough to remain market leader. I didn't say that PSP was a complete disaster, I said if it was by itself it would be okayish, it's not anything fantastic by any means, but in a two horse race it is being increasingly left behind. These kind of arguments sound like Nintendo fanboys talking about GameCube selling 20 million yet not being a complete failure because Nintendo made money on it... so what, put things in perspective, GameCube sold crap world wide and overall the appeal of that console wasn't fantastic. YES PSP is a bad thing to parallel with GCN because they are in different leagues because GCN was much worse than PSP, I just think some of these comments are overly optemistic in the face of the competition.

 live.. will never work on PC... PC Gaming = Free not $50 a year... unless your playing an MMO.