DS vs. PSP: The Handheld War Nintendo Wasn't Supposed to Win

DS vs. PSP: The Handheld War Nintendo Wasn't Supposed to Win

On paper, in late 2004, the PlayStation Portable was the better handheld. It was more powerful. It had a bigger screen, a sharper screen, a widescreen — 4.3 inches of 24-bit color at 480 by 272, the kind of resolution a PlayStation 2 was running games at, the kind of resolution your laptop at the time probably didn't have. It had an analog nub. It had a disc drive that could play movies. It had the PlayStation name on the front. It launched at $249.99, which was a hundred dollars more than the Nintendo DS, and the hundred dollars felt, in the press coverage at the time, like money well spent.

The DS had two small screens, neither of which did anything the press cared about. It had a stylus. It had a microphone. It was the kind of hardware you laughed at in a TV commercial, not the kind of hardware you queued for in the rain.

And then the DS sold 154 million units. The PSP sold about 80.

This is the story of how Nintendo won a war it was supposed to lose, and why the win wasn't really about the hardware at all.

The Spec Sheet That Should've Won

Let's get the numbers out of the way, because the numbers are the most interesting part of the story and the part that gets the least attention in the retelling.

The PSP ran a MIPS processor clocked somewhere between 222 and 333 megahertz, with 32 megabytes of system RAM and 2 megabytes of video RAM. It pushed polygons through a custom GPU rated at around 2.6 gigaflops, which was, in 2004, an honest-to-God graphics chip. The screen was a 4.3-inch TFT running 480 by 272 in 24-bit color, with a 30:17 widescreen aspect ratio that let developers think about games the way developers thought about movies. The disc drive, the UMD, was small and weird and proprietary, but it spun up to 1.8 gigabytes of storage, which meant the PSP could ship a Final Fantasy game that looked like a Final Fantasy game. It could also, in theory, play Spider-Man 2 on a plane. The PSP was, in every measurable way that mattered in 2004, the more impressive piece of consumer electronics.

The DS ran an ARM946E-S at 67 megahertz, with 4 megabytes of main RAM. It had two 3-inch screens, each at 256 by 192, neither of them particularly bright, neither of them widescreen. The bottom screen was a resistive touchscreen, which was, in 2004, a thing that lived on Palm Pilots and Point of Sale systems and not on game consoles. The processor was a deliberate downgrade from the Game Boy Advance. So were the screens. So was most of the rest of the spec sheet. The DS was, by every measurable number, a smaller, slower, dimmer device than the PSP.

The PSP was not just a better handheld. It was a better device. It was the device Sony wanted the DS to be, and the DS wasn't trying to be that device at all.

What Nintendo Was Actually Selling

The story people tell about the DS launch is that Nintendo got lucky, that they stumbled into the casual market and rode Nintendogs and Brain Age to a hundred million sales. There's something to that. But the better way to read the launch is that Nintendo knew, before the first DS shipped, exactly what they were building, and the thing they were building was not in competition with the PSP.

When Sony unveiled the PSP, they called it the Walkman of the 21st century. That was Ken Kutaragi, the same person who had spent the previous decade convincing the games industry that the PlayStation 2 was a home console you could build a living room around. The pitch for the PSP was: a smaller PlayStation 2, in your pocket, for $250. The pitch assumed the customer wanted the PlayStation 2 experience, in a smaller box, on a plane. The pitch was, in other words, exactly the pitch Sega had made for the Game Gear in 1990 and Atari had made for the Lynx in 1989. Smaller version of a living-room device, with all the compromises that implies.

Reggie Fils-Aimé, then running Nintendo of America, gave a different interview around the same time. He talked about experience. He talked about the touchscreen. He talked about the microphone and the dual screens and the wireless link and what you could do with all of them that you couldn't do with a more powerful single screen. The press, at the time, treated this as Nintendo doing what Nintendo does — under-speccing the hardware and overselling the software. The PSP would win on the back of GTA and Ridge Racer and Metal Gear Solid. The DS would limp along on brain-training games and pet simulators, the way the Game Boy Color had limped along on Pokémon.

The press was right about the games. They were wrong about almost everything else.

The Launch Timing That Looked Like a Stumble

The launches overlapped by about a month, in a way that mostly confused the press. The DS launched in North America on November 21, 2004, the PSP launched in Japan on December 12, 2004, and the DS launched in Japan on December 2, 2004. By the time the PSP reached North America on March 24, 2005, the DS had been on the shelf there for four months. By the time the PSP reached Europe on September 1, 2005, the DS had been in European shops since March 11. The PSP got to be the first modern handheld in Japanese shops in years, which is a real advantage, and not much else.

The DS got to be the first modern handheld in North American shops. The DS got to be the first modern handheld in European shops. The PSP got to be the first modern handheld in Japanese shops by ten days, and the PSP got to be the only modern handheld with the PlayStation logo on the front. Those are real advantages too, but they were mostly advantages for the press, not for the customer.

The DS shipped 2.8 million units worldwide by the end of 2004, almost all of them in a single holiday season. It sold out repeatedly through the spring of 2005. The press kept calling it a fad. The customers kept buying it.

The PSP shipped well, by any reasonable standard — a million units in its first two days in Japan, half a million pre-ordered in Australia, close to a million in Europe in its first week. The PSP was, on every launch metric the press cared about, the device that mattered. The PSP was also $100 more expensive than the DS at launch, and $100 in 2005 was a different kind of money than $100 in 2026. A $250 handheld was a luxury purchase, the kind of thing a parent bought once and a kid did not. A $150 handheld was the second Nintendo console in the house, the one that lived in the kitchen drawer, the one that got handed to a younger sibling.

Price is not, by itself, destiny. But price is a multiplier on every other advantage a device has, and the PSP had real advantages it was paying $100 to advertise. The DS had the price advantage and a $100 worth of not caring about the spec sheet.

The Games That Mattered (And Didn't)

Here's the thing about the PSP library that gets underplayed in the retelling: it was good. Wipeout Pure on PSP, in 2005, was one of the best arcade racing games available on any platform. Lumines is a masterpiece. Metal Gear Acid is weird and ambitious in ways the DS never really matched. Patapon and LocoRoco are Sony at its most inventive. Daxter and God of War: Chains of Olympus and Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII all justified owning the hardware. The PSP's library, especially in the back half of its life, was better than the DS's library. The PSP's library was, in many categories, significantly better.

The DS's library was, by contrast, the most eclectic mess of any Nintendo handheld since the original Game Boy. Nintendogs sold close to 24 million copies. Brain Age sold 19 million. New Super Mario Bros. sold 30.8 million, the best-selling DS game of all time. Pokémon Diamond and Pearl moved around 18 million copies worldwide for the pair, on a platform that Nintendo had positioned as a casual-gaming machine. The casual market bought the DS in numbers Nintendo had not predicted. The traditional Nintendo audience — the Pokémon players, the Mario players, the Animal Crossing players — bought the DS in numbers Nintendo had predicted. The PSP was a games machine for gamers. The DS was a thing that lived in the house.

The PSP's biggest hits were mostly ports of console franchises: Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories sold 7.5 million copies, almost all of them to people who already owned a PlayStation 2. The PSP was, in a way the PSP's fans were uncomfortable acknowledging, a sidekick. You owned a PlayStation 2. You bought a PSP to play PlayStation 2 games on the go. The DS, by contrast, was a primary device. You didn't need a GameCube to enjoy a DS. You didn't need anything at all.

This is the part of the story that the UMD-versus-cartridge argument missed. The UMD was, technically, the better format. The UMD could hold 1.8 gigabytes. The DS cartridge could hold anywhere from 8 megabytes to 512 megabytes. The UMD could play movies. The DS cartridge could not. The UMD, in theory, was the format that let developers do anything they could do on a PlayStation 2. The UMD, in practice, was the format that required you to commit to a $250 device and a $40 movie purchase to watch a Sony Pictures release on a screen that was, in bright sunlight, barely visible.

The DS Lite Pivot, 2006

The DS Lite launched in Japan on March 2, 2006, in North America on June 11, 2006, and in Europe on June 23, 2006. It was thinner. It was lighter. The screens were noticeably brighter. The battery life was better. The DS Lite is, in 2026, the version most collectors mean when they say "DS" — it's the model you remember, the model your friend had, the one with the bright screens and the GBA slot on the bottom.

The DS Lite is also the moment the war was decisively over.

The PSP had been on the market for fifteen months by the time the DS Lite reached North America. Sony had the more powerful hardware. Sony had the more acclaimed games. Sony had the brand. The DS Lite walked into that market and won, and the win kept compounding. The DS kept selling out. The PSP kept selling fine. The DS kept selling out at a scale the PSP could not match. The DS Lite turned a close fight into a rout, and the rout was the moment the PSP's hardware advantages stopped mattering.

You can argue about why the DS Lite won. Some of it was the form factor — the DS Lite was, finally, a thing that felt like a premium Nintendo product, the way the iPod Nano felt like a premium Apple product, the way the original Game Boy had felt in 1989. Some of it was the games — Brain Age hit Japan in May 2005, New Super Mario Bros. hit the world in May 2006, and the next two years were the densest release schedule in Nintendo's history. Some of it was the third parties — the DS, almost uniquely in Nintendo hardware history, became a place where Western developers shipped hit games (Elite Beat Agents, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, The World Ends With You, Mario Kart DS). The PSP was a better showcase for ports. The DS was a better place to build a new game.

The PSP got the press. The DS got the market. The press does not decide who wins.

The Hardware Question That Wasn't Really About Hardware

If you want to understand the war in one sentence, it's this: the PSP was a smaller PlayStation 2, and the DS was something the PlayStation 2 couldn't be. Sony built a better version of an existing product. Nintendo built a new product, on worse hardware, that did new things.

The PSP, in 2007, could run a version of God of War that looked like a PlayStation 2 game. This was a genuine technical achievement, and it is the reason the PSP has a devoted fanbase to this day. The PSP could also play UMD movies, which is the reason Sony made a hardware revision called the PSP Go that removed the UMD drive and confused everyone. The PSP was, in 2005, the more impressive object on a Best Buy shelf, and Sony spent the next nine years trying to figure out what to do with the impressive object.

The DS, in 2007, could run Elite Beat Agents — a rhythm game where you tap a stylus in time with covers of songs like Avril Lavigne's Sk8er Boi and Village People's Y.M.C.A., and the experience is genuinely unlike anything on a PlayStation 2. It could run WarioWare: Touched!, a hundred-odd microgames each of which uses the touchscreen or the microphone or both, none of which lasts more than five seconds. It could run Nintendogs, which is, technically, a simulation game about taking care of a puppy, and which is, in practice, the reason a non-trivial number of DS owners bought a DS. The DS could not do anything a PlayStation 2 could do. That was the point.

Sony had spent the previous decade building a hardware lead. The PSP was the hardware lead expressed in a smaller box, with a sharper screen, with a UMD drive. Nintendo had spent the previous decade building a software lead, and a hardware ecosystem, and a customer base that trusted them to ship weird hardware that did weird things. The PSP was the better handheld. The DS was the better answer to the question of what a handheld was for.

The Afterlife

Sony discontinued the PSP in North America in January 2014, in Japan in June 2014, and in PAL regions in December 2014. The PSP Go, the UMD-less revision, had been discontinued earlier. The Vita, the PSP's successor, was a critical and commercial disappointment that confirmed, in retrospect, that the PSP's win in the press had not translated into a sustainable handheld business for Sony. The PS Vita, by the time Sony stopped making them, was a fine machine with a small library. It is not the device most people who owned a PSP went on to buy.

The DS line — original, Lite, DSi, DSi XL — sold through to 2013 in Japan and 2014 elsewhere, by which point the 3DS had taken over. The 3DS sold 76 million units. The Switch, which arrived in 2017, sold more than 150 million. The DS's two-screen idea has lived, in some form, in every Nintendo handheld since.

The PSP has lived, in some form, in nothing. The Vita tried to be the PSP's heir and the market said no. The PS Vita's most lasting contribution to Sony's hardware story is the lesson it taught: the PSP was a fluke, not a foundation. The PSP was the better handheld in 2004, and the better handheld lost.

What the Lesson Is

Here's what I keep coming back to, the part of the DS-vs-PSP story that I think about when I think about any two competing products: the PSP was the more powerful device, and the PSP was the device that was easier to spec-check. The PSP had a number you could put in a headline. The PSP had a number that a reader could compare to a PS2's number. The PSP had a number that a dad in a Best Buy could read out loud and feel like he was making a smart decision.

The DS did not have a number. The DS had a thing you did with it. The thing was small, and hard to explain, and the first time you tried it, you didn't quite get it, and the second time you tried it, you started to get it, and the third time you tried it, you bought one for your kid. The DS did not win on specs. The DS won on the thing that happens when you hand someone a stylus and a microphone and a wireless link and ask them, gently, to imagine what they could do with all of it.

The PSP gave you a smaller PlayStation 2. The DS gave you something a PlayStation 2 could never be. The PSP was the better handheld in 2004. The DS was the better handheld for the next decade.

The war is over. We know who won. We should probably stop pretending the war was about the hardware.