GameBrief’s Nicholas Lovell has painted a decidedly gloomy picture for Sony’s PlayStation Portable, claiming the handheld platform is on its deathbed with the iPod Touch sitting idly by waiting to pull the plug.
"The iPod Touch is rapidly becoming the portable media player of choice amongst a younger audience, exactly the place that Sony wanted to be with the PSP," Lovell wrote on CasualGaming.biz.
"But the iPod doesn’t have expensive processors or a unique format disc like the UMD; it is an easy-to-use device that offers consumers their music, podcasts, short-form video and accessible games on the move and in my opinion, will be the final nail in the PSP’s coffin," he added.
Lovell also attributed the PSP’s decline to the substantial amount of games available to iPod Touch owners — apparently, the Touch offers more than five times the amount of games to choose from than Sony’s handheld.
Of course, it’s not always about the amount of games available. Take for example the Nintendo Wii, which, despite its vast catalogue of software, is ranked the lowest in playtime average according to Nielsen ratings and various other studies.
Considering the line-up of titles Sony has planned for its portable device in 2009, it’d be fair to say the PSP certainly won’t be going down without a fight.