The iPhone’s gunning for a slice of Sony and Nintendo’s handheld gaming pie, with titles such as Super Monkey Ball and Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart 3D leading the way. And there’s more to come.
EA has confirmed that Spore will be released on the iPhone, while ID is planning something special of its own. But which is really the best gaming machine? Apple’s all-powerful mobile, Sony’s slick-as-they-come entertainment box, or Nintendo’s multi-screened foldable? There’s only one way to find out. Fight!
Number of games
Ninty’s little handheld is the host with the most here, and with over 630 games aimed at the casual audience it looks to stay that way.
The PSP, despite being criticized for a lack of games, offers gamers over 450 ways to distract themselves, but the iPhone simply can’t compete with the library of its more dedicated peers. At the time of writing, there are an impressive 534 games listed on iTunes, although many are simple time-wasters, which can’t be compared with the PSP or DS Lite’s offerings. Only a handful of iPhone games are of commercial quality at present.
Winner: DS Lite
Exclusive titles
Both the DS and PSP have their share of top exclusives. The PSP can claim Grand Theft Auto Liberty City and Vice City Stories, as well as the likes of Metal Gear Portable Ops. Likewise, the DS Lite boasts Mario and Zelda games by the boatload.
Elsewhere, the iPhone has plenty of exclusive titles, since they’ve been crafted specifically for the phone. Touch-sensitive puzzle game Enigmo stands out as a potential standard bearer, but the platform still lacks a real flagship title to beat its rivals into submission.
The DS and PSP have this one licked. It’s a draw that leaves the iPhone looking dull by comparison.
Winner: DS Lite and PSP
Size and weight
We have a clear winner in the weight stakes with the iPhone tickling the scales at just 133g. It looks positively bulimic next to the 189g PSP Slim & Lite, and with the DS Lite failing to live up to its surname at 218g there’s really no battle.
The iPhone wins the war too, with the DS Lite most likely to cause unsightly trouser bulges thanks to its 21.5mm thick shell. The PSP Slim & Lite comes a close second with an 18.6mm girth, while the dinky iPhone 3G is just 12.3mm from front to back.
Winner: iPhone 3G
Playability and ergonomics
The PSP’s ergonomics are its biggest downfall. Play for longer than an hour and you’re sure to suffer aching hands. While the DS Lite isn’t perfect either, it’s much more comfy than the PSP.
The iPhone trumps them all in terms of ergonomics, but then it doesn’t have any buttons, meaning fingers are left hovering over the screen when playing anything but movement-sensitive games, inducing aches in all the wrong places. For this reason, the DS Lite is the best of all, combining touchscreen technology with good old fashioned button-bashing.
Winner: DS Lite
Price
The iPhone may be taking off as a games machine, but take its running costs into account and you’ll see it’s an impractical purchase for most gamers. Starting at £99 for the handset and £30 a month for a minimum of 18 months, it’s too extortionate for hardcore gamers to entertain. That’s a £639 commitment before you can even play a game. The DS Lite starts at £120 including a game, just beating the PSP’s price tag of £130.
Winner: Nintendo DS Lite
Multiplayer
There aren’t many multiplayer handheld experiences to match Wi-Fi bouts of Mario Kart DS, although the PSP’s Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops would argue otherwise. Both consoles have shown skills in multiplayer gaming, and while the iPhone has the potential to hop online and play against rivals anywhere in the world, very few titles have shown any interest in it just yet.
Winner: PSP and DS tie
Media abilities
Nintendo doesn’t do multimedia, so it’s left to the iPhone and PSP to duke it out. The PSP’s as much a mini media hub as it is a games device, with videos, photos and music at the core of its talents. Sony’s also lined up Fox, MGM, Disney, Paramount and Sony Pictures for the first wave of movie content for both PSP and PlayStation 3, although it’s yet to go live in Britain.
Meanwhile, the iPhone is sprinting ahead. iTunes now serves up TV and movies alongside music, and the latter can even be grabbed on the move, as long as the iPhone can reach a Wi-Fi hotspot. Until Sony gets its distribution deals in order, there’s only one contender here.
Winner: iPhone
As an owner of all 3, (well, iPod touch not iPhone) I have to disagree with your conclusions.
PSP flat out wins on the multimedia front. You can do so much more with it than ANY handheld media player. Out of the box it supports things like RSS, connecting to PS3/LocationFree boxes over the net and streaming content from them, internet radio, visualizations. PSP actually supports flash. PSPs TV out cables are far easier to obtain. PSP supports higher resolutions and bitrates, has far more media converters available with far more functionality (see XVID4PSP) PSP actually acts like a USB harddrive, so copying media to and from it is far more convenient. I use my PSP for video/photos, and the iPod for audio only. iPod touch/iPhone can’t begin to compete with Remote Play.
As for playability/ergonomics, I can’t disagree more. DS and DS lite are horribly unergonomic. They are designed to be held with one hand (while the other uses the touch screen) and it’s just too heavy for that.
As for multiplayer, DS doesn’t even deserve to be on the list thanks to friend codes.
Neotechni: I take your point about the USB hard drive functionality of the PSP, it certainly makes it easier to load with files. But when we compared the devices, we had to do so on their own merits. Not everyone has a PS3, or a Location Free TV box, and since Sony doesn’t include a TV out cable as standard, we couldn’t consider that either. As for ergonomics, we came to a consensus amongst our staff, and personally I’ve owned a PSP, DS Lite, iPhone (2G and 3G) and iPod touch since launch. I love all of them for different reasons, but have to admit the PSP is the only one that causes hand-cramp. Last year I flew to Vegas tapping on my DS Lite most of the way. I struggle to use the PSP for more than an hour at a time. What do you think about Apple’s touch gaming though? It’s completely flexible, but lacks buttons, so can it topple both Nintendo and Sony?
yo digo nada mas..
los q tienen ese tal iphone q no se agan los agrandados porqe a las maquinas portatiles no les llega ni a los talones
aguante la psp¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡
fuck DS, fuck IPHONE i LOVE psp
iphone-buttonless bitch
ds- SAME gameboy colour WITH TOUCHSCREEN
i AGEE WITH psp-FAN
I prefer the PSP (soon to buy the PSP Go!) over the DS Lite/DSi or the iPod Touch. I own all three because certain games can only be purchased on either the DS or PSP. As for the iPod Touch…it is just that, a music and video player.
I prefer the construction quality of the Touch over the PSP (metal and glass versus plastic) but the better external speakers (yes, plural…speakers) on the PSP makes it useful as a desktop radio since no headphones are needed.
If I could only have one, I would choose the PSP Go! Good thing I don’t have to choose.
Ah, I almost forgot. The new DSi idea is really terrible. At least the part where Nintendo has decided to remove multilanguage menus from the DSi, in addition to restricting the online game purchases to a specific region. What year is this 1990? Boo Nintendo. I am considering selling my import DSi just because of the this limitation.