Great news for Nintendo

[OB1]

The PSP has been delayed! From Games Are Fun:

Posted by
Luke Campbell at 03:20:54 PM EST on 02.25.2004.

Couldn't wait to see whether Sony could cut into Nintendo's stranglehold on the portable market? The wait's going to be a bit longer now, as Sony has announced the delay of their PSP handheld; while the PSP will still launch in Japan during this year's holiday season, US and Europe retailers won't see it until 2005. However, the delay is not a very long one: the system is still expected to ship globablly before the March 2005 end to this fiscal year.

"The reason we pushed it out here is we wanted to be sure there's a reasonable amount of software titles to launch with hardware," said Teresa Weaver, a spokesperson for Sony Computer Entertainment.

Sony systems have typically shipped earlier in Japan and then hit other regions later, and analyst P.J. McNealy says, "With many of the roots of the gaming industry being in Japan, it's traditional to pay homage and release a hardware product there first and then release in the U.S., even though the U.S. is a bigger market."

Either way, this development could allow Sony's loss to become Nintendo's gain: with no direct competition, Nintendo can either keep the $99 GBA SP price point in effect, or lower the price to attract an even larger userbase before the PSP takes flight. this may also allow Nintendo to release their DS handheld without playing second fiddle to the PSP.

So how many games does Sony want for its PSP? Electronic Arts reportedly plans on having 8-12 games ready to go for the PSP launch, and THQ has stated 2-3 titles will be available, so third parties are making an effort to give the PSP a sizable library right from the start. Could we end up having too many PSP titles to choose from? That would be a welcome problem for consumers, no doubt.

The launch price has still not been clarified, but it rumored to be in the $199-249 price range. We will know more as E3 nears, so stay tuned!

Source: CNN

I bet Nintendo is estatic right now. If the DS comes out on time it won't have the PSP to be compared with.