Nintendo dismisses Sony Game Boy rival

[Big-O Mark]

Nintendo dismisses Sony Game Boy rival

Wednesday, May 14, 2003

Reuters

LOS ANGELES, California -- Nintendo Co. Ltd., whose portable Game Boy video game player has dominated that market since the 1980s, shrugged off Sony Corp.'s plans to unveil a rival device and instead focused its efforts on new games.

Sony has already raced past Nintendo to the top of the game console market since launching its PlayStation franchise nearly 10 years ago. Sony now wants to take on the handheld market with its new "PSP" handheld device that will debut by the end of 2004.

"The fact that they are putting a lot of features into it (PSP) is very Sony-like, but at the moment we dominate the handheld market and there is no need for us to be overly concerned right now," Iwata said Tuesday at a press conference at the Electronic Entertainment Expo, the video game industry trade show. "We will continue to do what we do best."

Nintendo's new Game Boy Advance SP handheld was released in March, and the $99 device has been hailed as Nintendo's best yet. Sony did not offer a price for the PSP but said it would be available in the fourth quarter of 2004.

Iwata said Nintendo would continue to focus on creativity in games, especially those that link the Game Boy and its GameCube console, which has struggled in the market after Microsoft Corp. launched its competing Xbox game console 18 months ago.

The GameCube, a major disappointment in the last fiscal year, trails both Sony's PlayStation 2 and Microsoft' Xbox.

Both Sony and Microsoft announced major hardware upgrades to their consoles this week, but Nintendo instead focused its efforts on new gaming titles and "connectivity" between the Game Boy and GameCube.

Aiming to bolster the console's sales, Nintendo showed a number of new games at its news conference, including a revival of the arcade classic Pac Man, a multi-player affair that will let one player act as the little yellow pellet-muncher and three other players serve as the ghosts that chase him.

Shigeru Miyamoto, creator of Nintendo's hugely popular Mario Brothers games, previewed an upcoming version of the Legend of Zelda series that will let four Game Boy players interact in the same Zelda game using their own screens as well as with a GameCube console hooked up to a TV.

"Make no mistake .... This time we will not give our competitors a head start," Iwata said.