Wedbush Morgan’s Michael Pachter has said that Sony may have missed the boat in regards to the handheld gaming space, suggesting the platform holder should have capitalised on the market years ago.
Speaking during an interview with NowGamer, Pachter expressed his doubts as to whether or not Sony will be able to keep up with the handheld business as things kick up a gear with the launch of the 3DS next year.
"I’m not sure Sony are going to keep up," he said, adding, "they may have missed their opportunity. They went down the portable music player route 30 years ago, and they’ve now conceded that market completely to Apple. When Sony went from a television and portable music company, to being a console company, they should have seen the market for a handheld, and they pretty much conceded that market to Nintendo when the Gameboy came out."
Pachter added that although Sony has chiselled a distinct niche for themselves on the handheld front, he feels the corporation has conceded a significant chunk of the market to Nintendo and Apple.
"I think Sony has carved out a niche for themselves, that isn’t as big as they originally thought, which is the over 13 crowd. They’ve given up the young end of the market to Nintendo and the middle part of the market to iPhone and iPod Touch. I just don’t know if there is a market for a pure gaming device anymore. Someone should give them a time machine to go back and fix all of this before it happened."
If recent rumors are to be believed, Sony will release a successor to the PSP in winter 2011, with a formal reveal likely to occur at E3 next June.