Chris Kohler's Game | Life blog has a great Q&A session with Wedbush Morgan's Michael Pachter. When the analyst was asked about the widening gap between DS and PSP, he had this to say: "I don't think Sony will close the gap, and don't think it is important that they do so. Nintendo has over 20 million loyal GBA owners, and we should expect them to dominate the category that they invented. Sony is late to the handheld game, has tried to approach the market from an older demographic, and is just now trying to beef up more kid-friendly content to appeal to 13-17 year olds. I don't think that the gap matters at all, so long as Sony makes money. I also believe that price elasticity of demand dictates that the lower priced product will sell more units. That's why there are more Fords than Maseratis."

While Sony will most likely never be number one this generation, they've gone a long way in changing the handheld marketplace. As long as people continue to buy the system and continue to buy the games, the platform will remain more than viable.

[Via AMN]

Wedbush Morgan is one of those places where people sit around in a dark room, pondering the future. They make up numbers that predict future sales, shoot lightning out their hands, and they have three heads. Michael Pachter is one of those men. While he was optimistic for Sony's handheld at the beginning of the year, he seems to be reconsidering his position: "We are lowering ... our forecast for PSP sales from 8.5 million to 7.4 million, and increasing our expectation for DS sales from 6.5 million to 8 million."

This isn't really too bad: even if PSP isn't number one in sales, it still has done much better than any non-Nintendo gaming handheld in the past. Regardless, the analyst had tons of good things to say about Nintendo, and not so much about Sony: he decreased his 2006 PS3 hardware sales estimate by 1 million units (to 3 million) and increased his 2006 Wii hardware sales by 500,000 to (4 million). Of course, it's not just the analyst that sees good things for Nintendo: the shareholders do as well.

[News via Gamespot]
[Sales chart for US. DS has a few weeks extra data due to an earlier launch. Via VG Charts]